When a footballer sets foot on the soccer pitch to participate in a soccer game, it›s easy to decipher how knowledgeable he is in the sport. In a few minutes and with his first steps and touches, discerning people would know if the ability is inherent. It takes only a matter of minutes and it›s surely going to show if such a person is a footballer or a football airhead. Football airheads are the type we referred to as people with “two left legs” back in our playing days.
In The Hall of Great Men, University of Ibadan (UI), we had a team that challenged the Zikites in the grand finale of the (if my memory serves me right) 1995/96 Inter-Hall Football Competition. That was a period of peak performance of the team during our years as Kutites. By the way, in UI, the Israel Oludotun Ransome Kuti Hall (more popularly known as Kuti Hall) has the sobriquet ‹Hall of Great Men› while the Nnamdi Azikiwe Hall is ‘Zik Hall’ for short. Zik Hall had little or no rivals or challengers in football in that period. Edith Agoye and Moses Olawuyi were some of the Hall›s standout players. However, the football team of Kuti Hall gave a very good account of itself.
I couldn’t break into the Kuti Hall football team because there were better and more confident players like Samuel Awogu whom we called Energy; Friday (the fair player who won the award of the most-improved player that time) and the team captain, stocky Lawrence Odusi, who was also our Hall Chairman. Our star player then was easily Dotun Oyenuga. He was simply outstanding and was such an amiable fellow. Some of us also marvelled at the dutiful and versatile Tunde, a medical student who would always show up to play for Kuti Hall despite the high volume of academic work before him. We were obviously weaker without Dotun in the line-up but the team held its own and got to the final. Against a loaded Zik Hall in the final, we were almost naked and were seemingly helpless like a child without Dotun in the starting line up.
Jubril Arowolo, also from Zik Hall, was always running the Yoruba commentary which was seen back then as awkward. It was strange… But he was sure-footed and never appeared like an airhead in that vocation.
While we had our high performing players in the Kuti Hall Football Team, we also had our airheads. We had those of our Hall mates who had “two left legs.” They looked made for it and were interested in playing football but had not got what it took to make the necessary mark on the pitch. One was particularly outstanding and we christened one of such persons in ‹Okocha›. This Kuti›s Okocha had a complete set of football kits and even had the Austin Jay Jay Okocha’s ‘punk’ haircut. He looked every inch a football star because of how much he looked like Jay Jay Okocha: height, build, kits and all, and the stylish haircut known with the prodigy.
When we saw him at the football pitch during one of the team’s morning training sessions, we thought he was the one because he looked special and could be “the special one”. When approached, however, he unabashedly told us that he didn›t know how to play the game. It was shocking but we took it as he said it but urged him to still just play with us. We felt he might be too much of a humble man to tell of his abilities. Action, they say, speaks louder than words. However, during ball work at the training session, he proved that indeed, he had two left legs. He removed all doubt about his inability on the soccer pitch. We were warned but we chose not to heed his warning. In fact, he was so poor at it that he could not even be played as ‘training material’. But he had the best of looks, he was decked in the best of kits, and from our interactions we could see that he had the best of intentions for the team. Above all, he was truthful.
There are so many of such airheads roaming about the social media world today but they are not sincere to themselves. Social media is full of people with two left legs who are armed with impeccable football kits, but zero football sense. From their posts, comments, reactions, arguments, standpoints and postulations on subjects, it’s easily seen that these are the real airheads. These social media airheads are armed with quality, state-of-the-art tools – mobile phones, tablets, laptops and the like – but they lack the knowledge of what to say or what not to say and how to say them. They have the kits but lack the skills. These social media airheads were on full display recently when the matter of Nigeria national carrier, Nigeria Air, came to a head.
The recent turn of events with regards to the botched Nigeria Air project is one that has thrown up a lot of airheads we hitherto thought were not possibly such humans. There are loads of them gallivanting in the social media for food and for survival. On the failed Nigeria Air national carrier project, many Nigerians have elected to be proper vuvuzelas of odious excuses of the immediate past administration. Remember that the Federal Government of Nigeria, through its Ministry of Aviation proposed and made moves to establish a national carrier during the administration of General Muhammadu Buhari. It was to be propelled by Ethiopian Airlines. After years of planning, payments, propaganda and back and forth business movements, the Minister of Aviation then, Mr. Hadi Sirika, came up with something of an airline he called Nigeria Air.
From the birth of the airline through a logo, in July 2018, till the denouement of the Buhari administration midwifing it, in May 2023, there was hardly anything to show for the Aviation Ministry›s labour to deliver a proper national carrier. When ex-Minister Hadi Sirika eventually showed up with one aircraft as their government wound down, in May 2923, a lot of things about it didn›t sit well with Nigerians about the project. They protested through the only free space still available to them – the social media. There too, there were the government social media hounds readily stationed to counter anyone who ‘carries nose about’ on the airline. Unfortunately for the defenders/promoters of the airline and the actions of Sirika and his Ministry, there were stupendous arguments against their logic. Nearly everything they said about the project until the arrival of one aircraft with Ethiopian registration number marked ‹Nigeria Air›, was drowned in the obviously irregular moves and warped logic through which they wished to bequeath a credible airline. In the end, it turned out that the Nigeria Air project was a white elephant. The current Minister of Aviation, Mr. Festus Keyamo, said the Nigeria Air project was simply a fraud.
So, for the defenders of the Nigerian Air, the suspension of the project and its designation as a fraud by the Nigerian government took wind off the sail of all of them. However, the airheads among them and those with two left legs, but armed with great social media tools are resolute in their defence of their actions. This is not just sad, it is disappointing. They must have a rethink and admit that no one knows it all. Many of such people still hide in the cover of social media to hurl revulsive defence of their insults and continue in their diatribes on the project.
Keyamo couldn’t have described it better except that he was being charitable with his words. He surely had seen more dirt than he could possibly divulge or competently describe. Well, he needed to be charitable in his judgement of the Sirika misadventure because he was a member of the same cabinet with him in the Buhari government. Thus, the matter farted in Keyamo’s mouth and sprinkled salt in it.
Since Sirika and some others are now facing trial in a law court for their roles in the debacle, we will cross our fingers and see where the pendulum swings. However, it will be hard to believe and rest with such a thought that Mr. Hadi Sirika did not know this: When you send your fart out quietly, its stench will also silently reach those with you in the room. So, what he knows others in the ministry also know, except if he too is an airhead.
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