SportsNigeria3

The title of this piece is not designed to mislead or confuse. It is the best way I can capture in a few words, the many different thoughts, places and persons connected to one another in my mind. Everyone knows that Professor Wole Soyinka has never demonstrated any special love or affinity for sport even though, I believe, he may appreciate its significance as a social engineering tool From time to time, however, he lends his respected voice to serious national issues that have political implications and effects. I do not know if he knows George Weah, but I believe he too must have been pleasantly amazed at how the young man rode on the back of sport to become his country’s President. Professor Wole Soyinka, will one day, in the not so distant future, retire to the woods in Kemta, Abeokuta, where he will put up his feet in retirement, and begin to enjoy and celebrate the rewards of his immense contributions to the global pool of knowledge. So, kindly read this to th...

Were Chief Obafemi Awolowo to wake up from his place of eternal rest and see what has become of the Western Region of Nigeria, one of the places that would make him wail the loudest would be the Liberty Stadium, Ibadan. He would wonder how a people he left, sophisticated, enlightened and largely educated, with respect for values and a way of life that set them apart from the rest, would destroy one of their greatest legacies on the altar of personal interests, materialism, bad conduct and poor political judgements. Awo would be dazed at the catastrophe that has bedeviled the several infrastructures and institutions that his government and those of his immediate successors established and carefully programmed to take the region, and by extension the rest of the country and the Black race, to the pinnacle of global emancipation and development.The geographical disfiguration of Western Nigeria in an obscure structural and political arrangement has fragmented rather than united th...