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I
have asked this question several times in this column and I ask it
again: are we a nation that is inured to cheating? Are we irretrievably
sold on the idea that the best approach is the short cut route?

These questions
have been prompted by recent developments on our sporting scene, one of
which is our recent triumph at the Africa Youth Championship, which
ended recently in South Africa.

For a lot of
Nigerian football fans, slaying the Camerounian bogey felt even better
than lifting the trophy itself. Expectedly, officials of the Nigerian
Football Federation (NFF), have been beside themselves with excitement
engaging freely in backslapping and chest thumping.

But as we have come
to know with almost everything that has to do with our participation in
international youth football competitions, the victory in South Africa
is decidedly pyrrhic. It has come at the cost of national honour and
integrity.

For as we gloat
over our triumph, the foul smell of corruption pollutes the firmament
and dogs our every step. The use of players who are clearly over the
age limit in prosecuting a tournament, for which lads are supposed to
participate, certainly diminishes us.

For the second time
in two years, Adokiye Amiesimaka, the respected former commissioner for
justice in Rivers State and a former member of the Super Eagles, has
drawn attention to the use of players clearly too old for the teams in
which they have been fielded. In 2009 he pointed out to us the folly in
fielding Fortune Chukwudi, a player he said was 18 years old, seven
years earlier, in the Golden Eaglets squad.

This time around,
he has picked on Kayode Olanrewaju pointing out that the player was in
the same Sharks feeder team with Chukwudi nine years ago.

What has been the
reaction of the NFF and the larger Nigerian society to the disclosure?
Indifference. While the football federation has pretended nothing has
happened, one of its senior officials is alleged by a journalist to
have threatened his life for daring to draw attention to the fact there
are indeed more players in current Flying Eagles squad over the
prescribed 20 years age limit.

Now, before anyone
thinks that this practice is the sole preserve of the NFF, he or she
would do well to consider recent developments in the Athletics
federation of Nigeria (AFN). This week in Botswana Nigeria will be
participating in the African Junior Athletics Championships. The team
has been chosen and visas obtained. Sadly, we are confronted yet again
with allegations of use of overage athletes.

The danger of shortcuts

Last week, Olajide
Fashikun, one of Nigeria’s leading investigative journalists wrote that
some of the athletes in the Nigerian contingent are actually older than
they are making out:

“Nigeria, through
her athletics federation, has perfected a massive but criminally
fraudulent measure to go the next African athletics championships
holding in Botswana to cheat again.

“The latest is the
massive importation of 30 year olds to participate in championships for
17 year olds. In this team, we have a quarter miler whose personal best
by the records of the AFN is a 48 seconder! Can a 16 year old return
such? Haba AFN! One of your juniors was in the world universities games
in 2005 and in 2011 is a junior. This is obviously senseless cheating.
I have the three Nigerian passports of this single athlete all changed
at the AFN’s instance.”

If this revelation
does not disturb us then something is fundamentally wrong with our
values. No society survives or gets ahead through cheating. If anything
shortcuts, rather than help us along on the path of progress, actually
distract and makes us lazy.

For truly, it is
laziness that has continued to feed the desire of our sports officials
to field overage athletes in age grade competitions because it is so
much easier for them to do so than engage in the mental exercise of
devising programmes that would identify and groom youngsters to become
the elite athletes of the future who can win laurels for Nigeria.

No nation follows this path and succeeds and Nigeria will not be
different. True greatness in sports cannot be attained via the back
door. The potential to succeed exists; the resources to actualise it
are overabundant. What are lacking are integrity, commitment and plain
commonsense.