• Ikenna Paschal Okpaleke

Once upon a time, Kevin decided to try his luck with a girl in the neighbourhood. Felicia is her name. After persistent begging, Felicia decides to lower her guards a bit by giving Kevin the rare opportunity of taking her out on a date. In those days, this meant going to a fast food restaurant and having a bite of meat-pie and soft drink. Interestingly, Felicia did what most girls considered fashionable then: She only had a half bite of the meat-pie and also took half of her Fanta, pretending to be satisfied. Kevin, the poor dude, had to put up the face of someone who is comfortable with the situation. Deep down, he felt like choking Felicia for wasting his little money. But in order to ‘maintain’, he also pretended he was full and so had almost the same measure of left-overs like Felicia. Little did he know that the game was not yet over.

At the counter, Kevin had another chance to impress the innocent-looking Felicia by paying the bills with fresh crispy notes of 20. When he thought he had succeeded in ‘tripping’ Felicia, came the her request in a soft but insistent voice “Hey, Kev, I need a take-away!”

Kevin could not resist but to blurt a rather unfriendly “What?”

“Well, I need something for my friends. I told them you were taking me out.” Argues Felicia.

“Haba! Felly no be like that nah.” Kevin’s Queen’s English suddenly turned into Wafi pidgin. Not even the change of tone and language could save him.

To cut the story short, Kevin ended up buying butter cake for Felicia, and out of the 400 Naira he had saved for the trip, only 20 was left.

Well, I would advise you not to take the story too seriously. Yet, there is something about ‘take-aways’ that we can reflect on. In Europe, the ‘take-away’ should have been the remaining half of the meat-pie and the drink rather than the butter cake. But in Naija, we like to ‘maintain’, to ‘trip’, to ‘form’, and perhaps that is why our problems are never solved but always hanging on chance. And with regard to the World Cup and our team, here are some take-aways:

1. Not by chance– Our unity is never a matter of chance. Our success should never be built on chance. It must be worked out. It must be deliberately designed and vigorously pursued. You cannot face Messi with a Jersey that was anointed by a pastor. You cannot wish that the ‘god of soccer’ stays on your side against the Argentinians. Do you even know that the Pope is an Argentine. Well, I’m not insinuating anything. I believe in miracles anyway, but nothing is a substitute to hard work and discipline. This applies both to soccer and everything we do in life. As a kid, one of my favourite quotes was that of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upwards in the night.”
2. Football cannot unite us – This sounds like a bad news but it is the truth my dear friends. The victory given to us by Musa in the match against Iceland, was only a momentary feeling of being united. It was fleeting. It was not sustainable. That was why in the day that followed, more than 130 Nigerians were killed in cold blood and the President keeps blabbing about. If we were united then everyone of us would matter to each one of us. Look at the Icelanders, the international stage of soccer was a platform for them to display their unity. Even when they lose, you could still feel their unity. Their unity was already cemented at home. It was not crafted by football. Immediately we lost, some people started blaming ‘a Biafran like Ighalo’ for not being able to score. Imagine! Unless, we do our homework well, our occasional wins at soccer would only give us fleeting feelings of unity. But the choice between a fleeting feeling and a sustained state of unity is ours to make. It cannot be outsourced, even to the gods.

• Unfortunately, Musa did not deliver again as we had hoped and prayed, because it requires more than sheer luck.
• Unfortunately, Kevin did not keep up the relationship with Felicia, because he’s yet to recover from the pretense that rendered him poor in a day.
• Unfortunately, the task of unity is not an easy task, because it demands work even with the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit.