Super Falcons’ lesson for Kwankwaso

Each time this country discounts tribe and tongue, region and religion, it wins. Nigeria’s stunning victory in the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations final on Saturday was more than a football triumph. Trailing 2-0 in Rabat at half-time, the Super Falcons initially looked outmanned and outgunned by Morocco. Yet, unity of purpose, unwavering belief, and a collective resolve turned the tide. Esther Okoronkwo’s cool penalty, Folashade Ijamilusi’s equaliser, and Jennifer Echegini’s decisive last minute goal completed a remarkable comeback to secure Nigeria’s 10th WAFCON crown. I have not read anyone whining that Okoronkwo is Igbo, that Jamilusi is Yoruba, that Jennifer Onyinyechi Echegini is Igbo and that Coach Justin Madugu is from the North-East. No one has complained that a region or religion was marginalised in the constitution of that team that won. From the Muslim North’s ACF, through Middle Belt’s MBF, to Yoruba’s Afenifere, the SouthEast’s Ohanaeze Ndigbo and Niger Delta’s PANDEF, everyone danced and savoured the sweet stew of collective victory.

On football’s field of play, national pride is projected, political legitimacy is bolstered, collective national identity is strengthened. This is not just a Nigerian experience; it is so in the West, in Brazil, in Argentina, in Chile, in Uruguay, etc, and in all football-playing nations of Africa. Read David Goldblatt’s ‘Futebol Nation: The Story of Brazil through Soccer’; or read Kirk Bowman’s ‘Futebol/ Fútbol: Identity and Politics in Latin America’ (2015), a review of six books on soccer, the state and national identity.

There is confidence in unity (àgbájo owo lafíí soyà). Imagine Nigeria positively united in all we do as the Falcons did on Saturday. When stakeholders from everywhere pull in the same direction, even what looks like certain defeat becomes an opportunity. I watched President Bola Tinubu’s video call to the victorious girls. The Nigerian leader spoke very coolly presidential, and the ladies received the call with obvious happiness. I wished he would be that cool, collected, and prompt in all areas.

Duke University’s renowned basketball coach, Mike Krzyzewski, told an interviewer in 2011 that “leadership is plural, not singular.” By that he meant that every member of a team has something to donate to the coaching process. I read on CAFonline that Coach Justin Madugu’s halftime pep talk and the team spirit of the girls reframed the match for the Nigerian side on Saturday. I agree. I also think that a shared national vision can reframe Nigeria’s trajectory from tribal, regional squabbling to collective excellence. A mindset of team over tribe dramatically turned defeat into triumph on the Rabat pitch two nights ago; it can do the same off it. If we choose our governance team as we chose the Falcons that played on Saturday, Nigeria will defeat all its present troubles. But the pessimist in me says we won’t ever do what is right.

And I ask: Outside sports, can we ever be united and win well as a nation? A British colonial officer wrote in 1912 that his country met this country as “vast territories in which slave raiding and war were rife, where every man’s hand was against his neighbour, and security of life and property hardly known.” Those scarlet words were written 113 years ago. Now, does that passage not sound like a history of Nigeria of 2025? The British halted the drift, created calm and handed over a largely peaceful country to us. But the misfortune of having a pervert elite has reversed all the gains we made in the last century. Yet, politicians who want to rule us are very busy tying the strands of the forehead to the hairs of the occiput, the back. And they get applauded for it.

My allusion here directly addresses Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso. Last Thursday, he made a grossly divisive claim that the Tinubu administration had been diverting resources to the South at the expense of infrastructure and opportunity in northern Nigeria. The presidency responded that he lied. It said the North is far from being sidelined. It listed major expressways in the North; agriculture projects, health facilities, energy pipelines, and irrigation schemes that are under way across the region. A huge debate is rippling the polity and diverting attention from the real ailments of this sick nation. I sat back and marvelled at how a politician’s careless, opportunistic talk can fragment relations, poison discourses and blind citizens to shared gains.

Dropping his bomb during a stakeholders’ dialogue on the 2025 constitutional amendment proposals in Kano, Kwankwaso accused the Tinubu government of building roads only in the South while the North is left to decay. He said the Federal Government had diverted attention and resources to the South at the expense of the North. He was strategic and deliberate in making that allegation; he got loudly applauded by his Kano crowd. His statement rang alarm bells in the South. I heard some people asking how Kwankwaso could lie so calmly even as he seeks to rule the whole country as president. But that was really how Muhammadu Buhari started his hugely successful political career.

Buba Galadima, two weeks ago, said: “Some of us who recruited Buhari (into politics) had a mission.” He said the mission was to fight the OPC and its mission. The late General truly entered politics and never pretended where his loyalty was between Nigeria and northern Nigeria. His country was the North and he served it with all his heart and might, and his people appreciated him. The spell of division that gave Buhari his 12 million followers is exactly what Kwankwaso seeks to cast once again on the trusting, struggling masses of northern Nigeria. And, if it worked for Buhari, who says it won’t work for Rabiu Kwankwaso? All that the Kano big man needs to become a greater Buhari is to carry that message of northern marginalisation to all the major capitals of the North this week, next month and next year. His testing-testing-the-mic magic worked in Kano; the crowd is waiting for his Mark Anthony in other places.

Many southerners who heard the Kano strongman laughed at the strategic ignorance of a man who wants to be the president of Nigeria. Was his claim of southern heaven and northern hell true? No. The ride is bumpy in the South as it is in the North. I am from the South-West where the president comes from. If we have issues with him, it is because his politics courts the maiden outside at the expense of the wife at home. His charity is yet to begin at home. Virtually all federal roads in the South-West have collapsed. And he does not appear to care.

And I have a witness to this in Dave Umahi, Tinubu’s Minister of Works. The man gave a reply to Kwankwaso late on Friday. He said Kwankwaso lied and added that as Works Minister, he had “been badly accused” of doing projects “only in the North, especially North-West.” I am more interested in what Umahi said he has not done than in what he said he has done. And, I am happy he admitted that his ministry has been very unfair to the South-West in the execution of road projects. Hear him: “I have been under pressure by some stakeholders for the construction of their major roads like the abandoned Ibadan-Oyo by Arab Contractors; Ibadan – Ife-llesa; Ilesa-Akure-Benin; and Ore-Sagamu roads. These are the real major projects in the South-West which I have been appealing to Mr President to give me money to do… The people of the South-West may think that I am doing nothing about the major projects in their zone. These are projects that are within major economic corridors between the South and the North and (which) deserve attention.”

You heard the minister saying he is begging the president for funds to do roads in the president’s region of origin. When the falcon struggles to hear the falconer, know that “surely some revelation is at hand.” God bless W.B. Yeats and his ‘Second Coming!’

“If you pardon, we will mend” says Shakespeare in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. Umahi asked Kwankwaso to apologise to Tinubu. The minister got it wrong. The apology from Kwankwaso should be directed at the suffering people of southern Nigeria who have been wrongly accused by this aspiring northern leader of eating other people’s ration.

A bad workman blames his tool. The issues the North has today, according to Kwankwaso, “have to do with the lack of enough resources and mismanagement of the little that comes in.” He said that is why the North had insecurity and poverty. Then, from him came a warning and a threat: “It (insecurity and poverty) is happening here mainly, but like a desert, it will go everywhere.” Go where? I am not a Tinubu man but I wonder how the North not having resources and “mismanagement of the little that comes in” has become an albatross on the neck of a man who became president two years ago. Kwankwaso himself has been everything except the president in Nigeria. His share of the problems of the North and of the nation is huge. The rain that beats the northern vulture today did not start today. If there will be a respite, the source of the deluge will have to be traced and plugged. And that source is right there in the North. The pest that is devouring the vegetable of the North is on the stem of the vegetable. All politicians of Kwankwaso’s mindset should learn from the magic of the Super Falcons. It won because it is a team without tribe and tongue.

Now, this before we go: If you have an eye for the trivia like me, you would see the most important paragraph in the 26-paragraph “Message of Gratitude” published by the family of General Muhammadu Buhari in The Nation newspaper of Thursday, 24 July, 2025. It was inserted right after the first paragraph. The family wrote: “It is the humble request to everyone to keep the departed soul in their thoughts and continue with their pre-decided schedules and commitments. That would be a befitting tribute to the late president.”

If I had been consulted by the Buhari family for the appropriate words to use in that paragraph, I would have donated a masterstroke proverb from the Yoruba armoury: “Bí ojú bá ye ojú, kí ohùn má yè” (if the eyes no longer align; make sure the voice, the word, does not waver). It is a poetic metaphor for loyalty beyond presence, especially potent in a political landscape where betrayal is the norm.

The second paragraph of a 26-paragraph appreciation statement is prime real estate. To occupy that space with a request to keep “pre-decided schedules and commitments” is not trivial, ordinary or accidental. In a society like Nigeria, where political statements are often padded with lethal hints, dark euphemism and dank proverbs, such a phrase is more than an appeal for calm. I read in it a signal. I showed it to a friend; his verdict is that the family of the late General Buhari, by this phrasing, had positioned his death as a pivot. Me, I call this whole thing the politics of the ‘Second Paragraph’. In mourning, people often seek closure. In power, they seek continuity. The Buhari family, via this carefully crafted and strategically positioned line, appears to choose the latter. But continuity of what?

Between Thursday and now, I have read the paragraph repeatedly and asked: What are those “pre-decided schedules and commitments” that are so crucially important that they had to be inserted as the very second paragraph in a 26-paragraph statement of appreciation to those who mourned the dead? In other words, the Buhari family’s demand for fidelity to commitments is curious. What are those commitments? Are the commitments political? Or are they financial? Were there unfinished political alignments or pacts tied to Buhari’s legacy? Is it about the 2027 elections now on the horizon? Or, is it another Gordian knot beckoning on the sword of an Alexander the Great?