In a game against Real Madrid, I hit Pepe on the head and Sergio Ramos came to me and said, ’’Do you want to leave the pitch with the lift or with the ambulance? Choose one’’. I said why are you asking the question like this. Sergio Ramos said, ‘’Because Pepe said I should ask you’’.
—–Aritz Adoors (former Atletico Bilbao player)
When, in this country, are we likely to have crazy presidents, governors, and chief executive officers of MDAs, who are themselves very clean and therefore have the moral courage, and on the assumption of duty one blessed day, will gather all their employees from top to bottom in one hall and ask each of them this question: ‘’Do you want to go back to the comfort of your home and meet the warm embrace of your wife, the cheerful and congratulatory smiles of your children and the enthusiastic welcome of your relatives and community members with trumpets and drums and sounds of rejoicing or do you want to go to jail and meet and mix with armed robbers, conmen, kidnappers, murderers, liars, dishonest persons, adulterers, fornicators, ten percenters and all manner of criminals?
And when any of them wonders aloud why you are asking this type of question, tell them as coolly as possible as Ramos told Adoors in the quote quoted above that ‘’it is the people of Nigeria who have asked that I should ask you such question because they are simply tired with bribery and corruption, laziness, incompetence, mediocrity and every nonsense that have, for years now, kept us down as a people’’.
For those who do not understand or follow the lovely game of football and may not fully grasp the import of the content of that quotation, it is, perhaps, appropriate for me to do a little bit of explanation. As indicated in the quotation, Aritz Adoors was a former player of the Spanish top-flight football team Atletico Bilbao. Sergio Ramos and Pepe on the other hand, were the tough defenders of Real Madrid, another Spanish team now the current league Leaders of La Liga. In their heydays in Madrid, Ramos and Pepe were the chief custodians and ‘’chief enforcers’ of their team’s dream to be the constant leader of La Liga and perennial winners of the Champions League. The two used to give their all for the success of their side and were most times responsible for late header wins for Madrid in very many crucial encounters. As executors of their team’s desires and will, they were, therefore, not ready to tolerate anyone who would want to mess up with their team or the individual players, especially crucial defenders like them. Quite often, they were savagely and unjustifiably attacked by members of the other team they were facing as happened here for Pepe, attracting that stern warning from his partners in enforcement duties!
I found Adoors’ testimony funny but very relevant in our search for order and consequent progress in our country. It became a quotable quote because those who know, know the significance of what Ramos told Adoors. What Ramos said to Adoors was what we children in primary and secondary schools in those good old days used to be told by the headmaster or principals is a ‘’stern warning’’, violation of which the violator will face dire consequences. He or she may not be carried away from the school premises in a lift or ambulance but he or she may have to go with swollen or sore palms or buttocks full of welts of the cane!
There is no hope in sight that at the beginning of every administration, we will have a set of leaders who are different from the ones we have had before and who are determined to depart from bribery and corruption and all the wrong things that we have become used to as a way of governance of our country. Every administration now seems worse than the ones before. Hope is fading very fast in our country and this democracy is not likely to give a chance to bring in men and women of character to superintend our affairs. In the early part of this dispensation, they were men who were at least mouthing their distaste for bribery and corruption and doing something, even if it was not far-reaching enough to curb this menace. But as time went on, what we have been seeing is one administration making motions without movement or carrying out vengeance against political, regional or class enemies using the name of anti-corruption war.
Today, Aliko Dangote and former CBN Governor Emefiele are getting the heat of the ‘’anti-corruption war’’ because they did not support this administration in its drive to get into office. I do not know whether the dethronement of Aliko Dangote as the richest African has anything, even remotely, to do with his facing the anti-corruption sting. As we very well know about our Africa, Dangote may not regain his top spot again unless he quickly does something to amend his earlier mistakes or to ingratiate himself with those he has offended politically!
But we all know that even polite warnings have their uses. With what Ramos told Adoors, I am very certain that in the remaining minutes or hour of that game, Adoors must have approached Madrid players, and not just Pepe alone, with caution because he and other members of the Atletico Bilbao team knew the reputation or rather, notoriety, of Ramos. In Madrid, and I think even until now that he has gone to Sevilla, Ramos was, and is, a no-nonsense defender and captain of his team who is among topflight players of his pedigree to have earned some of the highest red cards from referees in many football competitions. Ramos will moor down any player who wants to behave funny.
I feel that the time has come in our country for a Sherriff who will mount a throne in Nigeria and decree that an end ought to have come, and that end is now, for us to turn a new leaf. Misrule has made us paupers in this land of prosperity.
