DALUNG’S OGBOJU APOLOGY

Minister of Youth and Sports, Solomon Dalung

We are very funny in this country. And Youth and Sports Minister, Solomon Dalung (or is it Dalong?) seems to be most funny, or comical, of all. What with his funny-looking boy scout beret and shorts! Now he has added to his basket of funny gestures.

I hear Dalung has finally apologized to the Dream Team VI for the embarrassment in Atlanta and their late arrival at the Rio Olympics. Dalung said that as the Sports Minister, he must take the blame for it, and that being so, it was his responsibility to apologize.

Well, that is great coming from the minister, except that his apology came late; it came after the team had beaten Sweden to qualify for the next round of the Olympics football event.

We all know it was the sheer determination of the boys and the technical bench that has so far kept the guys going and nothing else. We all know their preparation left much to be desired.  After the victory over Sweden, Dalung has seen that the team would probably go far in the Olympics tournament hence he is positioning himself to take the glory to come.

I bet if the team had not performed excellently thus far despite the shoddy preparation, Dalung would have packaged them home on the next available flight out of Rio without any apology whatsoever. Had the team crashed out, Dalung would have looked for a scapegoat to blame and the team would have instantly become an orphan and their allowances would have gone into voice mail. Were the performance of the boys otherwise, Dalung would have reminded everybody that he was against their camping in Atlanta in the first place.

But success has many fathers, and Dalung is no doubt positioning himself to be one of the fathers despite not playing his role as a father. It is the way we are in this country. We often fail to play our role, yet we want the glory that comes with victory. I won’t be surprised if even the calamitous Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) President, Amaju Pinnick seeks to insert himself into the success story of the boys too. In fact I’m beginning to perceive that happening already.

I hear that the Confederation of African Football, CAF, has granted the NFF $60,000 and that nice guy Amaju Pinnick has magnanimously ordered that that money be used to pay off arrears of salary of Coach Samson Siasia and the allowances of Dream Team VI players.

Wonderful! It is only in our country that I see that some big man somewhere must give an order first before the most basic things in the normal course of business are done. The President or a Minister must give an order before money is released for assignments of a routine nature. A governor must give an order before salaries of civil servants are paid. If these orders are not given, things pile up for months and people suffer.

I have never been able to understand this culture of order before ordinary things are done. Obligations that are ordinarily taken for granted elsewhere easily become a tool for favouritism in our clime, all because an office holder whose duty it is to do his job wants to be noticed.

Amaju Pinnick is one such fellow, and Minister Dalung’s apology is an insincere one, otherwise he should have offered it before the team departed Atlanta. The apology should have also been extended to the government and people of Nigeria for the international embarrassment Dalung and the Olympic Committee’s incompetence caused Nigeria.

Dalung apology is an ogboju one.