WHY NIGERIA MUST LOSE TO CÔTE D’IVOIRE

By Akin Ojumu

As usual, the knuckleheads ruling Nigeria have found something with which to distract angry and hungry Nigerians. The devious ruling cabal has given the people an intoxicating opium to lure them to somnolence and forgetfulness.

Capitalizing on the citizens’ embarrassingly short-term memory, the contemptuous ruiners of Nigeria are using the ongoing AFCON competition as a ruse to divert the attention of Nigerians away from the real issues facing Nigeria.

AFCON is a red herring to take the minds of Nigerians off their multidimensional poverty, extreme hunger and widespread insecurity inflicted upon them by the inept rulership of Tinubu and his crew of half-wits.

Potbellied politicians with varying sizes of protruded tummies, and donning the national jersey, embarked on profligate junkets to Côte d’Ivoire with hundreds of their lackeys in tow to watch the matches on tax payers money. It’s as though their gratuitous presence in the stadium is in any way, shape, of form helpful to the young men representing the country on the pitch.

Expectedly, the cynical ploy is working. Nigerian masses, like hypnotized zombies, are glued to their television hooting and hollering as twenty-two grown men chase after a piece of round leather ball even as hundreds of thousands of spectators in the stadium cheer them on.

Completely forgotten is the real everyday living existence. The social media is agog with AFCON and all you hear the people talk about is football, football, and more football. Even kidnappers in their hideouts deep in the forests and bushes are not left out; they too are following the matches on Radio along with their victims who are bound, gagged, blindfolded, and tied to trees.

That’s why I can’t wait for the sugar high of AFCON excitement to wear off so that Nigerians can wake up to the reality of their empty stomachs and delicate existence. The moment the competition is over, and the distraction is gone, the people will be jarred back to consciousness by the pain of their hunger pangs and the loud rumbling of their empty stomachs.

As much as I would have loved to root for the Super Eagles of Nigeria to prevail over the Elephants of Côte d’Ivoire in Sunday’s finals, this is not the time for silly sentiments of patriotism. In fact, what would be more patriotic is to root for Nigeria to lose. Nigerians need to experience a national catastrophic event that would jolt them back from their reverie. The citizens need to be shocked back to the reality of their pitiful existence.

Nothing will accomplish that more than a stinging loss to Côte d’Ivoire in Sunday’s finals. Getting beaten by one of their fiercest and most-hated rivals in the African continent will most certainly rouse easily distracted Nigerians from their slumber to their suffering. A bitter taste of defeat will get them to rise up and take their country back from the rats and cockroaches eating away their collective national destiny.

An excruciating defeat of Super Eagles in the hands of the Elephant of Côte d’Ivoire will be a powerful awakening drug to bring Nigerians back from their induced comatic state to confront their daily experience of joblessness, homelessness, months of unpaid salaries, skyrocketing food prices, dangers in the cities, and perils on the highways.

As easily malleable people who often resort to fate to cover their oddities and absurdities, the Super Eagles must eat crow to bring them down back to planet earth.