2026 is a year of great expectations. Nigeria is at a crossroad. Dark, ominous clouds hang precariously in the horizon over the country.
Should the current state of insecurity in some parts of the country persist and become a flood, Nigeria can either ‘sink’ or ‘swim’, depending on how she navigates through the turbulence.
The country has been under the siege of migrating strangers crossing Nigeria’s porous borders, with luggage of guns and ammunition fanning the embers of crisis across Nigeria.
The Growing Crisis and Youth Vulnerability
I don’t know what the figure of out-of-school children in Nigeria is, currently, but in 2002, it was estimated at between 13 and 18 million. My country had the highest number and concentration of illiterates in the world. It was a rather shameful and alarming statistic.
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So, when the United Nations created a special unit within it in 2002 as a part of its Millennium Development Goals agenda, it must have had Nigeria in mind, a country sitting by a time-bomb waiting to be detonated by any crisis!
At that time, the situation in the most affected parts of Nigeria made Borno State the perfect environment for the recruitment of idle youths with the energy to drive satanic agenda.
The Rise of Boko Haram and the Power of Soft Tools
That’s how and why ‘Boko Haram’ found easy and willing ‘soldiers of fortune’ in the North East of Nigeria to fight their internecine wars.
The UN had its hands full with crisis and challenges. The organisation also recognized the power of soft power tools to deal with many of these challenges that affected the youths, by empowering them to fight back with their passion. Sport led the sector in providing the tools. The others in the same sector included music, dance, film, IT, the arts, tourism, culture, cuisine, fashion and the glitterati.
That’s what the UN saw and created a special unit that had the mandate to deploy sport as a weapon in its 8-points agenda for the eradication of illiteracy, unemployment, hunger, poverty, inequality, and disease (HIV/AIDS) by 2015!
Sport as a Global Tool for Youth Empowerment
It was a global recognition of the power and potency of Sport to tackle some of the gravest challenges in the world by engaging the youths and making them more productive. The strategy was simple – take them away from the opium of societal vices and easy virtues, and re-direct their attention to activities that they are passionate about that offers them new, exciting and profitable opportunities in an emerging new world. The New World Order is upon us now, even if the goals set 25 years ago have not been achieved here in Nigeria, at the least.
Instead, there is an escalation. The current insecurity situation in Nigeria threatens the peace and unity of the most populous Black nation on the face of the earth! And according to the UN’s prescription of 2002, a significant part of the solution is idling away in neglect and ignorance.
Sport and the UN’s Youth Mobilisation Efforts
I was at the conference at the University of Rhode Island, USA, when the UN addressed the youths (students under 17 years of age) from 157 countries and challenged them to take up the mantle of leadership, spread the message of Sport and become the tools to be deployed to drive the global agenda.
Even FIFA got involved. I was a part of the ‘1-Goal, Education for All’ campaign on the eve of the 2010 World Cup that was launched to further promote the UN agenda to all corners of the earth using the football event. Most world leaders became ambassadors and were involved in the propagation.
SOCA: A Practical Experiment in Sport-driven Education
In my own little way, I took up the assignment as an ambassador in 2002 beyond mere rhetorics. I came back to Nigeria and planted the seed of a sports school to drive the UN’s MDG agenda. The plan is that the unique sports school with a special mandate would eventually become a model to be adopted by small and large communities around Nigeria.
That is the genesis of SOCA, the ‘Segun Odegbami International College and Sports Academy’, (SOCA), a boys and girls secondary school based in Wasimi, Ogun State. Here, the passion of the students, Sport (and film, music, photography, dance, drama, fashion, IT, and so on), is offered to them in over-abundance. And within that environment is a strict culture and structure of a co-curricula menu that includes an academic program designed and delivered in such a way that makes learning easier for the students.
Sport as a Model for National Integration
The long term plan was that a successful school would become an adoptable model to be replicated in other places, for example, one in each of the 6 geo-political zones, or one in each State, or even one in each Local Government Area.
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Specialised sports- and skills-acquisition schools (like military schools of a similar orientation) will make children to set aside all differences (religious, tribal, ethnic, status, etc) as a primary panacea for success, be single-minded, and work as a team to achieve success. There is no other way to succeed in sport. The youths must stay away from the ‘devil’s workshop’. They can only thrive on the foundations of peace, unity, hard work, discipline and enduring friendship amongst themselves.
A Tested Strategy with Proven Outcomes
SOCA set out to test the efficacy of this simple theorem promoted by the UN to achieve big objectives that can change the world. My country needed to embrace it, test it and practice it if found to be efficacious.
I have told this story several times in the past. I am repeating it here again.
Many years ago, I sold the idea of an experiment to the Borno State government. We agreed and randomly selected 5 out-of-school boys from that Boko Haram-infested part of Nigeria. The boys were identified and selected for their passion for sport, and willingness to pursue success in the sport along side academics-made-easy. They were to spend the last 3 years of their secondary school in SOCA.
Transforming Lives Through Sport and Education
Lured by the sports dream, the boys left their State for the first time at about ages 13/14, buried their fears and prejudices, arrived to the heart of Yoruba land, embraced the challenges and conditions, concentrated on their sport whilst being served academics ‘a la carte’.
After the specially designed programs, 3 of the 5 boys passed the West African School Certificate Examination, went on to Universities and have graduated.
Meanwhile, all 5 are still in sports, and the trajectory of their lives has changed for good, forever.
The Missed Opportunity and Nigeria’s Persistent Insecurity
That experiment in SOCA, well documented for posterity, remains the clearest evidence and the simplest demonstration of the power of sport as a tool that can help to eradicate illiteracy by enrolling the children into school, retaining them in school, empowering them to pursue education delivered in simpler and easier ways, and/or acquiring some entrepreneurial skills in other sectors. The reward is that all 5 of them did not end up in the forests of Sambisa kidnapping, killing or abducting people, or fighting a religious war!
Also Read: Abeokuta – Slowly, Steadily Developing A Sports Economy! — Odegbami
It was an ingenious plan and a program that worked. The evidence is in Wasimi, near Abeokuta in Ogun State. And Imole Ogbo, Osun State. Anyone can go there and see for themselves the small projects with big dreams.
The tragedy is that the result of the experiment was belittled, buried in the sand of neglect, or ignorance or even a lack of understanding of the place of soft-power tools in a new World Order.
Sport and Soft Power as National Defence Tools
Soft power is a perfect response to the challenges in some parts of Nigeria that are still riddled with challenges of insecurity.
American President, Donald Trump, waded in with some harsh threats that have provoked several interesting developments.
A new Sheriff has also been appointed to over see Nigeria’s further response.
A General With a Sporting Pedigree
I am particularly excited about the choice of this deserving and tested military General whose credentials tick all the boxes of qualifications, competency, integrity, political correctness, vision, geography, etc, to head the Ministry of Defense at this time.
It is a perfect fit!
Particularly exciting is that General Christopher Musa comes with a very rich pedigree in sports.
Sport and the Future of Nigeria’s Security Strategy
It is, therefore, time to revisit the UN’s SDGs agenda and see how Sport and other soft power tools can contribute their quota, through strategic deployment and collaboration with other agencies of government, to reduce and subsequently remove, this existential threat of insecurity hanging over Nigeria’s neck like the fabled Albatross in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’.
