Football, issues, Naija, Politics, Sports

Nigeria’s Football Crisis Was Never About Talent

Tomorrow evening, Morocco walks out in Boston against France for a place in the World Cup semi-final, the second tournament running that the Atlas Lions have reached this stage, a feat no African country has ever managed before. Nigeria will be watching from home too, like everyone else, except we won’t be watching a Nigerian team lose narrowly to a giant somewhere in the bracket. We won’t be watching at all.

The Super Eagles are not in the United States, Canada or Mexico this summer. They are not anywhere near a World Cup pitch, having lost a penalty shootout to DR Congo in Rabat last November, then spent months arguing about it at FIFA headquarters in Zurich instead of preparing for anything on a training ground.

Here is the part that should embarrass us more than it seems to: Nigeria has never had a talent problem. This is the country that gave the world Kanu, Okocha and Obafemi Martins, and now sends Victor Osimhen to fight for European Golden Boots every season. The Super Falcons, operating under the exact same federation as the men’s team, have won their tenth Women’s Africa Cup of Nations title, coming from two goals down against a Moroccan side playing in front of its own fans. Ten titles. No other women’s national team on earth, in any confederation, has ten. If raw ability were the metric that decided football success, Nigeria would be unbeatable. It clearly is not the metric.

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Education, issues, Naija, Personal Development, Politics, University

Why Nigeria’s Workforce Debate Is Stuck at the Wrong Altitude

For two weeks, Nigerian commentators have argued over whether Tosin Eniolorunda is right that Moniepoint MFB cannot find 500 qualified Nigerians to fill its vacancies. I have read several commentaries, opinions, and research outputs. Each is responding to something real. But for me, the debate is being argued at the wrong altitude. The real question is not “where is the talent?” The real question is: what is the talent supposed to be for?

When a country commits to a long-term economic and industrial strategy, its education system must become the mechanism for delivering the necessary human capital. The curriculum, the skills pipeline, and the financing for training should not operate in a vacuum. They should be intentionally reverse-engineered from the ultimate goals of the national vision. That is how graduates are prepared for the future economy the country intends to build, making the education system fundamentally downstream of national vision. Three cases make the principle visible.

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issues, Naija, Politics

Reforming Nigeria’s Asset Privatization Approach

I came across a post on X recently that sent me back to the troubled history of Nigeria’s privatization programme.

It reminded me of the 2003 NITEL-Pentascope scandal. NITEL, Nigeria’s state-owned telecommunications company, was not just another public enterprise. It was responsible for critical national infrastructure, including Nigeria’s access to the SAT-3 undersea cable, a major artery for international connectivity.

Yet NITEL was handed over to Pentascope, a Dutch firm that was barely a year old, reportedly had only eight employees, including the janitor, and had no serious experience managing a major telecommunications company.

Within a year, NITEL moved from a ₦15 billion profit to a ₦19 billion loss. More than 250,000 homes reportedly lost their phone lines. It was not a complex failure. It was a failure hiding in plain sight.

For me, Pentascope is not just a bad chapter in our telecoms history. It is the perfect lens through which to examine many of Nigeria’s privatization heartbreaks: ALSCON, Ajaokuta, Delta Steel, and the 2013 power sector unbundling.

In that same X thread, someone argued that Nigerians should simply “move on” from these failures. It reads like an innocuous statement from a frustrated citizen, but never a good idea. Moving on without understanding what went wrong is not closure. It is willfully inflicted amnesia, acting mature. Nations that forget their policy failures do not heal from them. They repeat them, and usually at a higher cost.

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