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THE NATION TUESDAY, APRIL, 28, 2015 SPORT EXTRA Details of the NFF Nike contract revealed IT manufacturing giants, Nike, is to supply kits to the value of K$750,000 to the various National Teams of Nigeria in the first year of the contract recently signed with the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF). Details of the contract, signed in London last Thursday, showed that the products value would increase in the second year, with the American company committed to supplying kits to the tune of $1million to the Nigeria National Teams. They will supply kits worth the sum of $1million to the National Teams in the years 2017 and 2018. The three-and-half year contract was signed by NFF President Amaju Pinnick and General Secretary Mohammed Sanusi, with Tina Salminen, Nike’s African Football Sports Marketing Director, representing the American behemoth. There are also various bonuses specified for any of the National Teams that qualifies for major international championships, with the Super Eagles to earn up to the sum of $500,000 at the 2018 FIFA World Cup finals in Russia. “We are comfortable with the contract, because Nike came across during the negotiations as being fluid and ready to listen to our demands. That is always the key aspect; you always need a partner with a listening ear. “Nigeria football is happy to associate with a global leader and I am much convinced this is just the beginning. As we go ‘What Flying Eagles must do’ ITH most Nigerians tipping them to be the first Nigerian WU20 boys’ team to win the FIFA U20 World Cup, Flying Eagles coach Manu Garba has outlined what they must do to have the expected impact in New Zealand. Speaking to SL10.ng, the former Golden Eaglets coach says there has to be a lot more to the team, for them to win the competition. “The things we must do to achieve success in New Zealand are first of all, good preparation, which I think we are having at the moment,” he said. “Then of course there has to be hard work from both the players and the coaches. “There also has to be team discipline and transparency in the way we select the players. We must make sure we select the best players for every match,” he said of him and his assistants. along, NIKE may also be willing to partner with some of our domestic Clubs and even the League Management Company,” Pinnick said.arry on my good form to show what I am capable of to the teams watching me for next season,'' Troost-Ekong concluded. The 21 - year - old stopper, who becomes a free agent in the summer, is on the radar of teams based in the United Kingdom and Holland. Zenith Bank WBL •AHIP seeks win after Benue Princess loss By Adeyinka Adedipe HE Adolescent Health and Information Project (AHIP) Queens Tof Kano blew their chance of winning their first game yesterday as they lost 45-58 in the Zenith Bank Women Basketball League at the sports hall of the National Stadium, Abuja. The Kano girls had a fantastic third quarter, recovering from a poor first half where they trailed by 20 points (10-30) reducing the deficit to (7 points) 32-39 going into the final quarter, but their challenge broke down in the final quarter as the Patience Idoko-led Benue Princess ran away with the hardearned victory. However, inspirational performance from Idoko who Oshoala inspires Liverpool to victory SUPER Falcons’ youngster Asisat Oshoala was in impressive form scoring Liverpool Ladies' first goal against Manchester City Ladies in their Sunday April 26th FA Women's Super League match held at the Select Stadium. Oshoala's goal came in the 12th minute, provoking the visitors into a revenge run that was rewarded nine minutes into the second half through Nikita Parris . Liverpool’s winner came finished with a double double, 16 points,11 rebounds and 14 points from team mate Cynthia Gbihi, ensured second win of the season for the Benue Princess. Speaking after the match, head coach of the AHIP Queens, William Morrison said his team was gradually getting into their stride and their focus is securing a place in the Final eight. "We have prepared and worked hard for this moment. We just need to find our feet and we will start winning our games". Idoko believes her team can get better this season if they play together. "If we can play together I believe we can make the Final eight. We are playing First 63 though a 58th minute Line Smorsgard strike, assisted by an Oshoala arrangement. The match ended 2-1 in favour of the hosts. Having had a consistent playing time for a club she joined at the beginning of the year, Oshoala is now eyeing the golden boot, with Sunday’s goal being her second of the season, one behind the duo of Gemma Davison and Rachel Williams. The win saw Liverpool jumped to third on the ladder. Deepwater tomorrow and it's going to be five players against five so we have nothing to fear". As Benue Princess get set for their next encounter against the former fourtime champion, First Deepwater, AHIP Queens will be have a day of rest and enough time to prepare for Plateau Rocks on Wednesday. Also, Oluyole Babes, who once struggled in past seasons, got their second win in a roll after defeating Taraba Hurricanes 47-22. The Stephen Ogunleye tutored girls coasted to victory courtesy 18 points from Bose Amoo, while Tobi Ogedengbe added 10 points and 8 rebounds in the one sided encounter. •Iheanacho FA YOUTH CUP FINAL: Iheanacho scores again for City FBy Akeem Lawal LYING Eagles coach Manu Garba got cheering news ahead of the FIFA Under-20 World Cup in New Zealand, as striker Kelechi Iheanacho demonstrated his return to match fitness by scoring for Manchester City’s Under-18 side in a 2-1 loss to Chelsea U-18s in the final of the FA Youth Cup, played at the Stamford Bridge Monday night. There were doubts whether the Golden Ball winner at the 2013 FIFA Under-17s would be allowed to attend the Flying Eagles’ training camp in Germany, ahead of the Under-20 World Cup after missing City’s 3-1 loss in the first leg to the defending champions Chelsea. The 18 year-old, however, showed a glimpse of what to expect from him in New Zealand by giving Manchester City the lead on his FA Youth Cup debut as early as the 7th minute of the encounter in front of 10, 969 fans. Aron Nemane broke forward down the right and his cross was met well at the near post by Iheanacho to knock the ball in past Bradley Collins. The Nigerian, despite his documented inexperience, provided City with the most potent threat throughout what was a wholly impressive display for the youngster.
TUESDAY, APRIL 28, 2015 TRUTH IN DEFENCE OF FREEDOM VOL.10 NO. 3198 ACK in 1986, I served with Uche Chukwumerije and about a dozen other senior media figures on the Publicity Advi- Bsory Committee for the National Population Census, at the instance of Tola Adeniyi, the commissioner for public affairs and communications at the National Population Commission. After general introductions at the Committee’s inauguration, Chukwumerije had walked up to me and told me how much he admired my weekly column for The Guardian, and how he looked forward to each installment. I told him how I had treasured his pan-African newsmagazine Afriscope, and how I had served as its University of Lagos stringer and had been generously compensated for my effort. That encounter was the beginning of what went beyond mere acquaintanceship, though it would be claiming too much to call it a friendship. Shortly after he was named Secretary for Information in the Transitional Council, he came to my office at Rutam House one late afternoon, unannounced. Preliminaries over, he told me he had come to seek my help and that of “my boys” in carrying out his duties as Secretary for Information. “Not so fast, Uche,” I said. “You didn’t consult me before taking the job, and now you are asking me to help you make a success of it. Tell me: Why did you accept the job?” Chukwumerije said he had agonised over the offer and had consulted with his comrades in the progressive community – he named the activist Baba Omojola specifically – and they had all advised him to accept the offer because if he did not, it might go to someone who could not bring to the office the ideas and ideals for which Chukwumerije stood. Besides, they had told him that the best way to change the system was from within. “What if, on taking office, you find that the government is pursuing an agenda different from the one you had been appointed to execute?” I asked. “No way,” Chukwumerije said. He had raised that very question with Babangida, and had made it abundantly clear that he would resign if he found that the government was pursuing a hidden agenda, he said. Babangida had in turn assured him that he harboured no hidden agenda, and was resolutely committed to handing over to a democratically elected government on August 27, 1993. As proof of his earnestness, Chukwumerije said, Babangida had pulled out a drawer from his desk and reached for a copy of the Quran to swear by, but could find none. “How very convenient,” I said. “You believe him?” “C’mon, Tunji, you are too far gone in your cynicism. If you don’t believe him, you should at least believe me.” He assured me, as he said he had assured Babangida, that he would resign if he found that he was being used to pursue a scheme he had not bargained for. “That’s good enough for me, Uche. What do you want of me?” RIPPLES NIGERIAN BEATEN TO STATE OF COMA BY POLICE IN ASIAN COUNTRY–News Luck chap, here NIGERIANS are beaten to ‘STATE OF FULL STOP! OMMENT & D COMMENT OLATUNJI DARE AT HOME ABROAD & DEB EBATE olatunji.dare@thenationonlineng.net Remembering Uche Chukwumerije •The late Chukwumerije “Call me to order, rebuke me publicly whenever you feel that I am straying from the ideals we share,” he said. “I will do better than that,” I told him. “I will remonstrate with you privately. I will not go public unless you make private discussion impossible.” We sealed the deal with a handshake. We rarely met thereafter, but kept in touch through his special assistant, Dr Dokun Bojuwade, since deceased. The Transitional Council, comprising many eminent Nigerians from a class and an era that military president Ibrahim Babangida had spent the previous eight years excoriating, was charged with supervising the last nine months of his political transition programme that had lost momentum and credibility. He had manipulated the programme so often and in so many ways that it seemed to have become an end in itself, a journey to nowhere. Even as the programme muddled its way towards the June 1993 presidential election that was billed as its culmination, proxy groups established and financed by the military regime were staging rallies and employing every platform to urge Babangida to continue in office. And Babangida R ADICAL Lagos pastor Tunde Bakare has come up with a prayer perhaps only his inimitable self can pray: “My sincere prayer is that,” he prayed his prayer, “not all those who helped Gen. Buhari to win the elections will help him run the government”! That is Pastor Bakare’s latest prayer release from his Akilo, Ogba big house of prayer — and his congregants must have lapped it up, the diktat of the man of God! Now, how’s that? In the secular world, that prayer would qualify for basic inequity — for is that not praying that whoever sowed should not reap? Should it not also translate into prayerful iniquity on the ecclesiastical plane, if God is not man and man is not God, even if there are trumpeted (wo)men of God, who nevertheless delude themselves by playing God? And pray, where is the place of that part of the scripture, which stresses divine grace and never human accomplishment, by saying, without the grace of God, all is as clean as a filthy rag? Perhaps that never has any appeal in Bakarean theology, as the radical evangelical petrel unleashes Bakarean prayers and even prophecies, from his blessed pulpit! Recall, 1999. The equally controversial Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo had just won the Nigerian presidency. Bakare was perhaps piqued by Obasanjo’s monumental betrayal of the June 12 cause, as MKO Abiola lost both himself was lending them every encouragement. It was in the context of this pervasive uncertainty in the weeks leading to the presidential election that I asked Bojuwade to tell Chukwumerije that I needed to see him, persuaded that he would be in a position to help resolve my doubts. I met him at his official residence in Ikoyi, Lagos, in the afternoon of Friday, June 4, 1993, seven days to the presidential election. Dispensing with the usual preliminaries, I asked Chukwumerije pointedly whether the election would hold. He said he could not answer categorically, but that the indications were that there would be no election. He said he was flying to Abuja the next day, Saturday, to return to Lagos the following Tuesday. If I looked him up the day after, he would be in a position to tell me categorically whether the election would hold or not. Chukwumerije did not return to Lagos that Tuesday, and I never saw him again. That very day, the Abuja High Court, Justice Bassey Ikpeme presiding, ordered NEC Chairman Humphrey Nwosu and the Federal Government to appear the following day, June 8, to show why the presidential election scheduled for June 12 should hold. Two days later, on June 10, in the dead of night, Justice Ikpeme issued an injunction blocking the election. But this was not a blanket ban, for she added that NEC was free to ignore her order since, as the law stood, the court lacked jurisdiction in the matter. Against all odds, the election took place. When it seemed clear that Bashorun MKO Abiola of the Social Democratic Party was headed for a landslide victory, Babangida hid behind a battery of suborned judges and revanchist shysters to annul it. Chukwumerije was not a party to the annulment. He first learned of it, I gather, from a reporter who sought his reaction to it. He had dismissed the question as an unseemly joke, until the reporter as- HARDBALL Ecclesiastical spite? his presidential mandate and, eventually, his life. Besides, the trio in the Bakarean drama — MKO, Obasanjo and Bakare — are ethnic Egba. Well, all politics is local! So, perhaps brimming with ecclesiastical rage, the stormy Bakare went ahead to predict — no, that is secular! — prophesy: Obasanjo would somehow not consummate his mandate! That requiem of the futurologist (though of a chartered spiritual hue!), apologies to Prof. Wole Soyinka, held a troubled nation spellbound, and kept Obasanjo friends and fiends on sheer tenterhooks. Well, perhaps that prophesy would come true tomorrow? O, sure! It could well be that more powerful bleat of prayers eventually overthrew that dire prophesy? Or that it had really come to pass since, not a few would reason, after eight years of presidential power, Obasanjo himself had badly unravelled? Or just that God’s grace, which is sufficient for all, just punctured the virtual fatwa. Whatever it was, the notorious fact is that the Ebora Owu did not only consummate his first term, he gifted himself another four years, and, by the third-term gambit, even ogled an illicit third and, after failing, had TODAY IN THE NATION “Let security chiefs be appointed solely on merit; not on their perceived duplicity to subvert the law against the political opposition” OLAKUNLE ABIMBOLA sured that he was in earnest. But whether he was party to it or not, I had expected Chukwumerije to resign from the Transitional Council, based on the discussions we had held some six months earlier. Not only did he not resign, he championed the annulment with messianic zeal, the kind of fervor with which he had promoted the Biafran cause to stunning success and acclaim. With each passing day, he came across more and more like a Stalinist, bearing little resemblance to the engaging and amiable Marxist Comrade gifted with a rich, sometimes deprecating sense of humour, penetrating insights, a dialectical imagination, and a capacity for friendship across Nigeria’s treacherous cleavages. He dredged up footage on the civil disturbances of the First Republic and on the Nigerian civil war to inflict on the public a psychosis of fear. Listening to broadcasts on Radio Nigeria or watching news and current affairs programmes of the Nigeria Television Authority then, you thought you had been transported back in time to Albania and Radio Tirana in the days of Enver Hoxa. Here, to cite just one example, is the doctrine Chukwumerije enunciated in a meeting with proprietors, no doubt as a warning to the so-called Lagos-Ibadan axis, the critical posture of which he resented passionately: “Publication that subverts the national interest (as defined by the regime) “removes the publisher from the realm of proprietary rights and places him in the terrain of treason”. In another context, he charged that some sections of the press were being suborned “to incite communal mistrust” and hinted that tough new measures were afoot to replace the extant laws that did not provide “adequate regulatory safeguards.” The measures would surface later as Decree 43, a throwback to Tudor’s England. But that dark era does not and cannot define Uche Chukwumerije, who died last week, aged 75. Nor can it define his place in Nigeria’s history. It was but an episode in an otherwise productive and inspiring life of public service. Babangida’s silence at his passing is telling indeed, but it reflects more on the self-styled “evil genius” than on his former cabinet minister who had served him so dutifully. Chukwumerije gave Nigeria its first intellectually oriented pan-African newsmagazine. He was a committed socialist activist, eloquent advocate for the downtrodden, and as a member of the Senate and chair of its Education Committee, a firstrate legislator. Hail and farewell. I drew liberally on my book, Diary of a Debacle, for this column. •For comments, send SMS to 08111813080 •Hardball is not the opinion of the columnist featured above moved on to other power mischiefs that drew his fancy. And the Ebora Owu still dey kampe! But so is the prophet with unfulfilled prophesy; he also is still in business. Indeed, the grace of God is sufficient for all! On the cusp of another historic change of order, the first time the opposition defeated the central sitting government, Pastor Bakare has rolled out another controversial diktat, couched in “prayer”! But strictly, Hardball is not worried about Pastor Bakare. No, not in the least! The scriptures, to which he is totally devoted, has a short-and-sharp riposte to spiritual waywardness from any quarters: it is not what you eat that defiles you, it is rather what comes out of your mouth! Pastor Bakare will be saved or nailed by his own pronouncements. It is rather an appeal to the new Buhari government. Nigerian Christendom, through President Goodluck Jonathan’s evangelical allies in the Ayo Oritsejafor-led Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), actively contributed to the president’s democratic ouster. Gen. Buhari cannot afford such destructive luxury, for it is hard to see how the Buhari government would benefit from Bakare’s prayer of inequity. As for Bakare, Hardball’s friendly advice: keep to church matters; and leave politics to politicians. Published and printed by Vintage Press Limited. Corporate Office: 27B Fatai Atere Way, Matori, Lagos. P.M.B. 1025,Oshodi, Lagos. Telephone: Switch Board: 08034505516. Editor Daily:08099365644, Marketing: 01-8155547 . Abuja Office: Plot 5, Nanka Close AMAC Commercial Complex, Wuse Zone 3, Abuja. Tel: 07028105302. Port Harcourt Office: 12/14 Njemanze Street, Mile 1, Diobu, PH. 08023595790 WEBSITE: www.thenationonlineng.net E-mail: info@thenationonlineng.net ISSN: 115-5302 Editor: GBENGA OMOTOSO
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