It is really painful that I have to write about this young sports reporter in the past tense. Ajibola Oni was a first-class sports reporter and radio presenter with the Abuja branch of Brilla FM, the only exclusively sports radio station in Nigeria. For some years now Ajibola’s voice on radio had become very familiar to those listening in to his breezy live reports of sports events and personalities in the federal capital city. These past few weeks since I started working on the revival of sports in secondary schools project, Ajibola had become a part of the project and very close to me. He represented his boss Larry Izamoje during a few of our meetings and was part of the visitation party to some Ministers and Directors-General of some agencies relevant to the project. I travelled out of Abuja last friday evening and returned on Tuesday to the painful and shocking news of his death in the days between my travels. The more painful thing for me is that he was only 27, without a wife or child, and had a great future in broadcasting. Like so many young people in Nigeria these days, he died suddenly.
Tuesday, as I flew into Abuja, glancing through the Punch newspaper, I stumbled upon an obituary notice of a friend, Barbara Anna, whom I had run into a few weeks ago at the congratulatory party organised for our mutual friend, Chief Edem Duke, the new Minister of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation. She also died ‘suddenly’. She was in her early 50s.

Why these sudden and often times ‘unexpected’ passages? Why do people, mostly relatively young men and women, suddenly slump, or sleep and die? Our national dailies these days are filled with pages of obituary notices of younger and younger people dying ‘suddenly’. My column today is really a wake up call to all to confront the reality and to engage very vigorously in the conversations that the work of the Academicals Sports committee will generate all over the country on the present state of our being. Through my on-going work in Abuja I have come face-to-face with statistics about how bad things really are, the knowledge of which left me shivering in shock and horror. The situation with the youth of Nigeria is really bad.   
The following are not alarmist or speculative. They are a few of the facts of the matter that are staring every Nigerian in the face. Nigeria’s population is about 160 million, approximately half that of the USA. Of this huge number of Nigerians (the highest number of Black people in any one country in the world) about 65% are below the age of 25! Nigeria is made up mostly of its youth.

According to recent WHO figures, I am told, the average life expectancy of this mass of humanity is about 42 years. That means, in ordinary, clear, lay-man’s language, that any one of this number of Nigerian youth that lives beyond the age of 42 will be doing ‘extra-time’. Do I have your attention? I am talking to young boys and girls, and even young men, who are today strutting the streets of Nigeria seeking their own fortune; looking for work, or searching for a way (any way) in search of greener pastures abroad; seeking for admission into higher institutions already spilling with half-educated graduates; or idling away; or going to school, or not! According to the statistics, majority of those that constitute the youth of Nigeria today will ordinarily not live beyond the age of 42. In the course of their lives, one of several deadly ‘diseases’ will afflict them including hunger, disease, poverty, road accidents, political and religious upheavals, robberies, assassinations and kidnappings, environmental pollution, fake drugs, absence of first aid, poor medical treatment and equipment, collapsing buildings, plus a whole array of other life-terminating elements that could come into play to terminate a life. There are too many ways to die unnecessarily in my country and I appreciate my health now more than ever before.

More statistics: of the approximately 80 to 90 million people that constitute the youth in the country I now know that between 10 and 12 million are boys and girls of school age that should be in school acquiring basic education, but are not. They are potential illiterates that will inevitably join 18 million, or so, other illiterate adults that make up a huge percentage of our population. Nigeria is home to the largest concentration and number of illiterates (outside China) in the world.

With more and more of our youths roaming the streets and drifting into the ‘limbo’ of the poorly educated, jobless, unemployable, unskilled citizens, we now have a pool of over 34 million people carrying undetected, one heart related problem or the other, and silently and steadily dying! Any of them will drop and die at any time, as many have been doing all around us. Listen, I have been looking at the statistics and I do not want to create more national scare than I must have done already, so let me stop here, for now, without attempting to diminish the precariousness of the situation. Our youths, into the future, are in serious trouble.

The Nigerian human population is being decimated by the effects of poverty, hunger, disease, crisis, internecine wars, accidents, killings, political and religious conflicts and mental stress. But I tell you, the greatest ‘killer’ of all is the product of the sedentary life styles of our youths. A life lived behind closed doors, in front of television sets and computers is sedentary and is bound to be short-lived. Add to these the amount of time our youth spend on their telephone sets and you will realise how these very useful ‘toys’ now have almost totally occupied the body and mind of the youths, and the question about why the life expectancy of Nigerians continues to drop no longer requires an answer. A sedentary life is a slow and steady route to an early grave. That’s why the present generation is dying in mid-life, and, if nothing is done now, the next generation will die in their youth!

What you have just read is real. Ask the Vice-President of the Nigerian Heart Foundation, Dr. Kola Akinroye, and he will tell you about his frustrations trying to awaken Nigerians to the reality around them that millions are at serious risk of dying early because they take one the easy and simple step that provides an answer to the problem. The answer lies between education and sports. Ask the civil society advocacy groups for education in Nigeria that have been driving governments, through the decades, to pay more attention to education and make UN statutory allocations to the education sector, and be prepared to hear unbelievable tales of woe. The simple reasons for the present state is a lack of the culture of physical activity within schools - period! Note: physical activity within school.

We must start a national movement for mass participation in physical and health activities in the country.  A culture of exercise must be built and engrained in the youth of the country. Physical exercise is great fun for the young. They look forward to it. That’s what we must give them in abundance, and institutionalise it in order to sustain the practice beyond school. Physical and Health exercises must be revived TODAY in ALL schools all over the country, and every child given the opportunity to play outdoors. In the process the children build up good health in a sound body, and imbibe the habit of exercise that will sustain them through life and extend their life expectancy. It is really as simple as that. Let’s get our youths to play outdoors, in the fields, in the parks, on the streets, in our backyards, in every available open space in the communities. Lets get them away from the computers and television for some hours everyday. Let simple physical exercise become sport for those interested and watch and see an enhanced quality of life, improved general well being and extended life expectancy. That’s the only way the youths can live truly fulfilling lives that can extend their life expectancy in decades to come to 100 years and even beyond! For now, 42 is a bad number!     



ONE YEAR OF ILLEGAL NFF!



On August 26 the illegal board of the NFF completed one year old in ‘office’. How time flies. A journalist called me the other day asking me to make an evaluation of the performance of the NFF Executive Committee one year after they disobeyed a court order, conducted an illegal election and have been running the affairs of Nigerian football. That’s when I first realised that it has been one year since some of us have been waiting for the rule of law to prevail, whilst justice does its work!  
I asked him a question in response to his:’How can an illegality begat legality and any meaningful success?’ Is it not obvious from the endless crisis that continues to rock Nigerian football that all can never be well until the wrongs are righted? Will our government embrace an illegal act simply because it is convenient and time has past? Will our legal system fold its arm and watch its rulings flouted with impunity and do nothing? Are those aggrieved expected to just lick their wounds, forget their losses and do ‘siddon look’?

Look, it does not matter how long it takes, and what steps are taken to arrive there, but I cannot see injustice and illegality bearing the fruits of peace and success! So, look at the performance of the illegal NFF board in all matters of football in the country, what do I see? There is nothing to write about, at least through my obviously jaundiced eyes. Meanwhile, I still commend the Illegal NFF Board if not for any recorded success on the field but for the dogged fight they have put up even against overwhelming odds that they are bound to lose this particular war! Since there are no silverwares to show, how else can one gauge the success of an NFF Board?