Life has entries and exits. Success is usually an entry. Nothing has more admirers than success. Successful career! Successful exams! Successful candidates! Successful promotion! Success is like gold; it stimulates the heart. It thrills; it attracts. Everybody wants to be a brother or a sister of a successful person.
In November, 2013, the very morning Nigeria lifted U-20 World Cup, I was in Turkey airport with a group of Nigerian pilgrims. Everybody in the airport was fond of us. They hailed us, demonstrated with their legs our football dexterity and tactical discipline. They chanted: ‘Nigerians, you are the champions!’ They asked after Kanu Nwankwo, Jay Jay and other players and annoying questions that save for image protection we need to exhibit in a foreign land would have merited one a punch on the nose. Yet, the praises got into our small heads as they swelled to the size of big water melon. ‘We are the champions.’
When it comes to identifying with successful people, Nigerians are just superb. In this period of political impositions, people are already tracing their patrimony to the anointed ones ahead of 2015 general elections. People tell us to pray for their brother who is tipped for one political position or another. The same people will come after elections to demand recommendations from us to see the same politicians who are their ‘brothers’. Some will later call urging ‘The Dragnet’ to attack their brother who is a disgrace to the state.
Even when a Nigerian carries all the trademark of poverty, he still boasts of his powerful connections with successful persons in the church or state. I bet you that many Nigerians have lost their identity and will rather introduce themselves as brothers or sisters of one empty-headed politician or pulpit serial liar.
Nigerians are every inch Jewish. Every Jew prided in being a child of Abraham seating on the invincible throne of David destined to last forever. The Jews mobs chanted hosanna on the triumphant entry of Jesus to Jerusalem and succumbed 96 hours later to shout in annoying manner, ‘crucify him!’ When failure comes, everybody deserts you because failure has no brother and no sister. It is an orphan.
Last year saw Stephen Okechukwu Keshi leading Nigeria’s senior team, the Super Eagles, to victory in Africa’s Nations Cup hosted by South Africa. We watched his team progress from the preliminary confusion in the group stage to the winning form in the knock-outs. He kept changing his tactics until he got the Eagles into a shape. Fans would forget to zip-up after anxiety had sent them to the comfort room just to return and cheer up Keshi and his delighting Super Eagles.
In the end, the tactical savvy saw Super Eagles crowned the Africa Champions. Every Nigerian was proud of Keshi. He became the boss, the talk of the town, a man who won Nations Cup as a player, captain and a coach. A handshake with him from football fans meant more than a portrait of the crucified Christ who won eternal victory for mankind. People heaved a sigh of relief that the golden days of football had returned. Nigeria government made some promises which only God can fulfil.
The success story was not to last. Turbulent moment was forth coming for Keshi. His last ten games sum it all. In the last 10 games preceding his sack, the golden coach won two, drew four, and lost four matches. There could be no other proof that he had reached his tactical limit than his helplessness in many games he ought to have won.
Today, the success has fleeced. Keshi has, like an expired politician, resumed life as ex-coach. He now knows what it means to be a bat like his predecessors. He has joined the club of the high and low where we see Samson Siasia, Segun Onigbinde, Christian Chukwu and even Amodu Shuaibu, Las Lagerback, Bolts, Bonfrere Jo, Troussier. Keshi who needed police to contain cheering fans in whatever city he would enter, now goes home every day to the welcoming mercy of his family members. Such is life. Keshi’s rise and fall presents many lessons for Nigerian leaders.
First, Nigerians are people who demand instant results. Every Nigerian wants a winning team, winning leader and have little or no patience with a losing team or talkative politicians who hoard developmental plans in the pipeline. Nigerians hate such clauses like ‘efforts are being made’, ‘plans are underway’. Politicians gain popularity during electioneering with their stomach infrastructures but lose them whenever they stop. If a politician keeps providing, keeps partying, keeps settling party boys and girls, there is no problem. But if you raise people’s hopes and fail to satisfy them, you are in trouble. A politician, like a coach, is as good as his last game.
Secondly, no coach is bigger than his team, fans and soccer authority. Keshi was widely known as the ‘boss’ and it got into his head. He departed from being a leader who shows the way to a boss who commands with the confidence of I-know-it-all. Keshi was the captain of Westerhof’s mafia. He led his team mates to protest against shabby treatment like insufficient allowances and bonuses. He was a big boss, dictating to the coaching crew who to field and who not to. It was his former shot-calling that earned him the name ‘big boss’. But when Keshi became the chief coach, he disregarded the opinion of his players. He whipped those who dared to criticize him. He allowed emotion and sentiment to perforate his team selection and engaged in verbal altercation with his players. This affected team cohesion. Today, he has paid the price for being the big boss. He learnt a bitter lesson. No leader can be bigger than the people he leads.
Politicians who live on criticism do not tolerate any criticism when they come to power. Those who like to call the shots for others detaste others to call the shots for them. Power can make a leader mad. When a leader thinks himself bigger than his people, he becomes more dictatorial than gods. A politician who calls the shot may be bigger than his people some of the time but not all of the time. At the end, every politician boss pays the price for being the big boss. Michael Cromwell regrettably cried out in an isolated deathbed: “if I had served the people the way I served the king, I would not have been abandoned in my last days”.
Thirdly, every leadership position is a privilege, not a right. Keshi after leading Nigeria to victory in South Africa came to believe that he was indispensable to the national team. He saw himself as doing Nigerians a favour by coaching them and at various time threatened us with resignation.
No politician should see himself most qualified to lead his people. A call to political leadership is a rare privilege and not anybody’s right. Some see it as coming to doing us favour. No nation votes into power people who think they know it all.
Finally, bow out when the ovation is loudest. If Keshi had quit after South-Africa’s Nations Cup or his impressive performance in the Brazil mundial, he would have been on the list of successful coaches. He ignored it and landed in the infamy of being a sacked coach.
So it is with politics. A good politician bows out after a good job; retiring into the position of a respectable consultant. He does not switch posts because politics obeys the law of diminishing returns. Those who want to call the shots till the grave soon realize that reputation is like a football; no matter how neat, once it is rolling on the ground, anybody can kick on it.
Liverpool’s motto has a lesson for politicians: ‘You can never walk alone.’
