It is the eve of AFCON 2025.
I am suffering from Super Eagles fatigue.
I am not paying the usual attention to the championship. The Super Eagles are there, of course. For a team that I have always supported all my life, and believed in so passionately, I am surprised that I am not even making any effort to go to Morocco. I have sought no sponsorship.
My team at the Eagles7 Sports Radio Abeokuta, are working hard to provide some kind of coverage. As I told them, they are on their own!
Do not get me wrong. The Eagles will surely do well. It is in their established tradition to get to the semi-finals of AFCON, at least. It will not be different this time. They are always a threat to every team, no matter the opposition or how poorly they play.
Unfortunately, this time, I can’t work out in my head their route to the trophy. This time, also, getting to the finals will not assuage Nigerians that have been suffering from the excruciating pain of failing to qualify for the World Cup from a very easy group! The pain lingers and will not go away.
Winning AFCON 2025 will ease some of the pain, but anything less than that would attract dire consequences in the administrative firmament.
So, I have chosen to go to my small village of Wasimi, relax with some chilled palm wine and enjoy AFCON 2025 without my usual ‘fire’ and high expectations.
Good luck Super Eagles!
‘The Nest of Champions’
Believe it or not, last Wednesday was my first time at the Godswill Akpabio International Stadium, Uyo, ‘home’ of the Super Eagles, the only venue in the whole of Nigeria good enough to host the highest level of Grade A FIFA/CAF matches.
That’s where the Eagles played all their matches with mixed results and they still did not qualify for the World Cup.
I needed to visit the place to find out what makes this particular venue special, and, probably, why it does not always favour the Eagles despite their familiarity with it in the past few years!
My guide was my host to Akwa Ibom State that I last visited some 14 years ago – the Hon. Commissioner of Sports, Elder Paul ‘Sports’ Bassey. We went together to check out the edifice.
My humble impressions
From a distance, it is beautiful and imposing, dominating the entire environment and looking exactly like the giant nest of an eagle in a vast expanse of empty surrounding land.
Close up, its architecture is simple and functional, looking less intimidating and more friendly, inviting everyone into its cosy fold.
We enter the main bowl.
It is an all-seater and all-covered multi-coloured terrace that can sit 35,000 spectators, comfortably. There is no standing area anywhere. A tartan track runs around a lush green grass turf that is cordoned off in the middle of the main bowl.
This sports stadium is different from most other such structures that I have seen around the world. It is a single-sport (football) stadium. There isn’t any other sports structure ( except the athletics tracks that are a ‘decor’, looking ‘tired’ and the worse for wear without usage or the highest level of maintenance.
Apart from football, no other sport event takes place in the Nest. It has no recreational, social or commercial facilities in the environment, no hospitality suites even in the surrounding terraces for corporate organisations.
Apart from a few football clubs from neighboring States that occasionally play their continental club championships on the field, for most of the year, the stadium is idle, waiting for the next Super Eagles’ match.
What that translates into is that the owner of the facility, the State government, provides all the funds needed to maintain the huge arena. That is not an easy feat.
The builders of the facility, Julius Berger PLC, have a current 10-year contract to maintain the stadium. It costs a bomb.
That’s why the stadium has survived without a sports eco-system around it to generate any income for its upkeep. How long that will last remains to be seen.
I went to look closely at the lush green turf, and what separates it from every other ground in the country.
Indeed it is lush. The green grass on it is not local. It is imported from Germany. That is the greatest challenge. It looks like ‘Panadol’, feels like ‘Panadol’ but it is not ‘Panadol’.
There is the full retinue of groundsmen and an electronic watering system that keeps the grass green all year round.
Very few State governments would be willing to spend approximately N1.5Billion on the annual maintenance for such an edifice.
The worst part for me, as an experienced exponent of grass fields, one that has experienced some of the best grounds in the world, I recall Liberty Stadium, Ibadan, and Township Stadium, Calabar, before their destruction by a local contractor in 1995, one that is still around and still doing damage to more facilities.
Both stadiums had lush green turfs of Bahama Grass, locally available, and locally maintained. They were as good, 40 years ago, as any of the best grounds in the world today. And you don’t need to import foreign grass from Germany to achieve it. Or break the treasury to maintain it.
I left Uyo with mixed feelings. Even the surface of the ‘Nest of Champions’ is not the best. But only those with the right ‘eye’ can see it.
