The Transfer Window

Hmmm….,  $132m for Gareth Bale the 24year old footballer through the all famous Transfer Window. In my mental calculations and somewhere in the back of my head, I can hear the figure making the haste to get in line with the always regular calculations every one of us has on hearing the amount involved in buying a footballer. Yesterday, while watching the “ceremony” of Gareth Bale’s move from Tottenham Hotspur to Real Madrid, I couldn’t help but wonder what impact this move will make in the football world. Will this $132m leather kicker make great impact as much as Ronaldo did when he broke bank? Or will he make slim impact on the football world like Fernando Torres? The bottom line is that whether he makes good or bad impact, the amount spent will always never leave the minds of the fans and the one who doled out the funds.

Now let’s forget about the Football Transfer Window and talk about the Nigerian Political Transfer Window!!! Oh Yes, we have a transfer window in our political setting in this country and it is the most expensive “Window” ever. The transfer window of the Nigerian polity made so many waves and the move in that little window has been the news of late and the clubs involved are the PDP, the Factional PDP and APC. The window has been opened for a long time and the players failed to capitalize on it until the window was about to close and that ultimately was the period leading to the PDP convention.

The Nigerian polity can be likened to a typical football match  but with a twist where instead of the 2 teams playing with 1 referee and 2 linesmen we have 3 teams on the same pitch with more than 1 ball and zero goal. The game is played with Battle Axes, Guns, Machetes, Bombs, Blackmail, Thugs, Pen pushers, Foreign Banks, Oil thieves, Swiss Accounts, Terrorist organizations, inflation, stagnation, the World Bank etc. and fans are divided and taken apart by the players who are supposed to be there to give an entertaining show, they are left to even participate in the game which oddly enough already has 1 more team than is expected and these players are the referees and linesmen themselves. I really will not be dwelling on the whole political war until some other time maybe but I will like to talk about the move we have had on the Transfer window and how the PDP is gradually falling apart and taken in bits and pieces.

People fight themselves because there is no goal in sight and no matter where they kick the ball to, they just run about the pitch moving the balls around with no definite purpose and it kills the match and purpose of the game in itself.

The institutions in our dear country Nigeria is broken in pieces and that includes every sector of the economy from Oil and Gas, Agriculture, Manufacturing, Legislature, Judiciary, leadership etc. and at the moment these various sectors are having standing issues with the government who is not even bothered about the wellness of her citizenry and the man in charge is busy fighting a fight for 2nd term in an office that has grossly misrepresented the people and taken away their right to better life and infrastructure; the Health Sector is broken with the doctors and health workers on strike with hundred thousands of Nigerians travelling overseas to spend over N800m in health care bills; our children travel overseas to places like Ghana, Cyprus, India, UK and some others to spend over N1bn in education fees; our traders are spending billions of Naira in import duties bringing things we can ordinarily produce here on motherland; we have become important buyers from the very apprentice who learnt their trade in our stable and moved forward to utilize what they had learnt from the master; we are known as the giant of Africa in a land of giants and we have gradually become too small to be measured and looked up to like giants. Within a space of very short time, a sect of individuals who I have come to term CIP, (Criminally Insane Persons) who have taken it upon themselves to present us in bad lights and because of that singular act of making the people loose, many persons have become aggrieved and are seeking ways to bury the “club” that has become the bane of the existence of a green Nation with millions of energetic and budding entrepreneurs, men and women of light bulb intellectual prowess, men and women of prosperous drives and ventures that have been reduced by the government of the day to become unemployed, agitated, hurt, hunted, disturbed, maimed, harassed, tortured, tormented etc.

The transfer window has proven to Nigerians that the GEJ lead government has not only been unfair to the people, but he has been drawn towards the very unimportant things, he has presented to the Nigerian people that their welfare is not his business, he spends the resources of the nation fighting the people and financing his Undertaker of a wife to go wrestle those she considers her husband’s opponents in the ring. The number 1 seat of power has become a place for fun jabbing and poking with prominent Nigerians calling the Presidential seat and corridor a Kindergarten and the headman a drooling kid. Nigerians have taken to social network platforms to call that supposed Number 1 citizen unimaginable names with proof of his various “malicious achievements” and unguarded statements credited to both himself and his wife coupled with a retinue with a list of criminally insane persons serving in various arms of the cabinet. The number 1 seat has become a seat for fun and making the whole case more worrisome is the supposed seat of the office of the First Lady which has become somewhat bigger than the office of the President.

In the round up of the transfer window saga which someone described as Surugede dance with discordant tones featured some top players like Atiku Abubakar, Bamanga Tukur, Rotimi Amaechi, Alhaji Baraje, Olagunsoye Oyinlola to mention but a few and the fees these individuals got for their move is way more than the $132m paid for Gareth Bale, while there are some not too big moves that got good enough monies and fees for their moves, some were even loaned out for the purpose of achieving a win in the pitch of play.

Now what happens after the close of the Transfer Window? Will these players come through for the money doled on them for the move? Will they like Ronaldo push continuously to justify their pay? Or will they like Fernando Torres make us wonder why so much was paid? Oh, or will we like Nigerians wonder at the decisions we made to vote in Goodluck Ebele Jonathan to the number 1 seat in the country flowing with milk and honey? I guess you have your answers and they may bode well with you in whatever way they may but are we ready to seat and watch the game knowing what comes after the transfer window? Results are expected to start finding their ways to the score table but know one thing; results come out faster in my country before the exam is even set. Remember the governor’s forum election? My drift exactly.

Remember, in the transfer window players are bought, sold, loaned, taken on loan and most likely almost sold before the window closes and only the best are considered to make the headline news while the others make the news.

What is your Transfer Window Bank Breaking buy? Or is the window still open?

For me, I think the Transfer Window is still open and will stay that way for a long time and you will be forced to agree because typical of our Nigerian setting we fight for too long with almost a loss inevitable……..but somewhere in the distant, I see News. Now we wait to see if it’s the Headline News or just News.