a short story 
By Sylva Nze Ifedigbo
“Up Eagles” is the bold inscription on the placard. The bearer is leading the carnival of excited fans. There are over twenty of them dancing through the stands, raising both dust and tension as they stamp their feet on the concrete floor. Behind him is the attraction of the group, another boy with a bushy hair who is bouncing a football continuously on his head as he walks, winning himself cheers and more excited fans who maintain a crescent around him as they dance along.
There are so many like carnivals going on inside the stadium. Indeed, the whole stadium seems like one huge carnival. The excitement feels like a cloak over the air. I elbow my way to a vacant seat happy I had made it in a good fifteen minutes before kickoff. The stadium looks full, yet so many people are still outside shunting the queue and screaming at each other in order to get to the ticket point faster. I would have still been out there if I hadn’t inched several spaces ahead when the queue got real rowdy and the policeman used his horse whip to push the surging crowd back.
The seat looks clean but instinctively, I produce my white handkerchief from my trouser pocket. The handkerchief feels a little wet in my palm. I had used it to wipe seat from my face and neck inside the crowded danfo that I boarded to town and as I waited over an hour on the queue to get to the entry point at the stadium gate. The brown patch I see on the handkerchief before squeezing it back into my pocket tells me cleaning the seat was a wise decision. It feels great to finally sit down. My legs ache.
It is my first time inside the stadium. The new Stadium in Abuja was built two years ago for the All Africa Games. I had driven past it several times, admiring the perfect oval shape in the day and the bright white lights that formed a halo over it, at night. It looked smaller from outside though. Now inside it looks so massive. I take time first to look around, my eyes going from the top cover which shielded spectators from the sun and the rain, to the giant electronic board which bears the reason why we had all gathered; Nigeria Vs Cameroon.
My eye continues to rove. I see the state box covered with glass where the dignitaries which included His Excellency the President and the President of African Football Association (AFA) are sited. A section on the far left seems like a wide green patch. It is the Supporters Club boisterous as ever all clad in green. I see the many trumpets hanging from the mouths but their melody which always spices up matches when I watched from the television is hardly audible. It is drowned by the sound of the Vuvuzela, a new trumpet popular in South Africa which the organizers had mass produced for this tournament. The sound from the plastic horns reverberates around the stadium with rare energy making my ear drums vibrate.
The carnival led by the man with the Up Eagles placard approaches were I am sitting. Those that don’t have the noisy horn in their mouth are chanting and dancing to a song. It is a popular song, one of the popular tunes from the Supporters Club. I read the writing on the other placards; Our land our Cup, Go Eagles Go, Nigeria 3 Cameroon 0. Some of the chanting fans have taken off their shirts. Their bodies glister with sweat. I can feel the energy. I can taste the passion. I spring to my feet and cheer as they pass by singing along; He’s a miracle working God.
The two people sited in the row directly in front of me discuss and I eavesdrop. I had noticed them when they nudged their way to the vacant seat a few minutes earlier the stench of spent cigarette arriving with them. The one to my right whose height I was sure is close to six feet is chewing nastily at a gum. The other has on a sleeveless green top which gave a generous view of his thick biceps. They both have Vuvuzela’s hanging down their neck.
“Shebi I tell you sey stadium go full?” Tall Guy says his head making patterns in the air as he scanned various sections of the stadium.
“omo eh, no be small thing o,” Sleeveless replies turning to scan the section behind him as if he needed to confirm Tall Guys assertion. Our eyes meet briefly. I notice that the white of his eye is now red and immediately I imagine that the stench that had arrived with them wasn’t just that of ordinary cigarette.
“Para still dey catch me shaa” Sleeveless says after satisfying himself that indeed the stadium was full.
“No Para at all. Super Eagles are winning today.” Tall Guy boasts before placing the noisy horn into his mouth and producing a loud blast as if to reassure his friend of his confidence. Two other horns around blast off in response. I here a giggle from behind me. I turn around to see two girls about my age holding the horn and whispering to them selves. They seem very fascinated about the noisy horn. The smile on their faces reminds me of Yusuf, the son of the aboki that owned the kiosk in our neighbourhood. Each time he was out in the yard playing with his rubber toy car, his forehead quivered like the elbow of a lizard.
“…I don’t just trust the team. They almost gave me a heart attack in the semi finals. I really hope they get their acts right today” My ears pick up the last parts of Sleeveless’s statement. I think I prefer him speaking in pidgin. His English sounds like that of my secondary school Igbo Language teacher. All his ‘r’ came out as ‘l’. The doubts he expressed remind me of the two men at the newspaper stand the day before whose argument had propelled me to coming to the stadium to watch the match.
It was Friday. I was at Bro. Ehosa’s stand at the Hospital Road junction flipping through pages of Friday Punch in search of new vacancies. It was a normal routine since I returned from National Youth Service in Zamfara over a year ago. Initially, when I first started going there, Bro. Ehosa was a little hostile. As soon as he noticed I was not going to buy, he would shoo me away, the way you shoo a recalcitrant hen away from grains spread out under the sun, employing both his hands and his head to drive the message home. Sometimes, he added words to the sign language, the skin on his forehead forming two folds like poorly made ridges after the first rain.
“Oya bros, drop my paper abeg. Give chance, you dey block people wey won buy.”
Usually, I would hang around a little longer, peeping into other people’s paper and chipping something into their arguments. Those men, mainly retired civil servants and ex-service men gathered there daily to flip through the papers and argue. I thought they only came there to while away time and take their mind off their woes. Their view on most issues was always uninformed, so I always chipped in what I thought was the real information.
Just like when the issue of deregulation of the oil industry was hot in the news. Papa Ngozi who from my observation was the most literate of the lot and whose opinion on every issue was considered final, more like the ruling of the Supreme Court, had claimed that the policy was about rich people in Abuja buying up the refineries. I had jumped in, taking time to explain what it really meant, reeling out the words as I had been thought in the university for four years. Four years that now couldn’t fetch me a job.
Gradually, I became one of them, a member of the Free Readers Association and Bro. Ehosa stopped shooing me away. Now he welcomed me with a smile, exposing his brown set of teethes arranged like the buttons on an old church piano. It wasn’t long before I dethroned Papa Ngozi. It was a bloodless coup, the way the dark goggled General dethroned the Head of the Interim Government a few years ago. But I held court only once in a week, on Fridays. That was the day Punch Published job vacancies. Usually the men reserved all unsettled arguments of the week and once I appeared, I would be made to deliver judgment, their aged eyes pleading for my sympathy.
“Ehem, Bobo Is here” Papa Ngozi said that Friday afternoon, clearing his throat and spitting out on the dusty ground. The sun was full overhead. I could feel my shirts sticking to my bare back.
“Yes, yes, we’ve been waiting for you.” Ikot said, shifting on the wooden bench as if scratching his buttocks against the bench.
It was obvious they had been arguing, Papa Ngozi and Ikot but it was Bro. Ehosa who revealed the bone of contention.
“This our finals tomorrow, who do you think would win?” Bro Ehosa asked his face bearing a mischievous grin.
The question only served to fan the smokes of disagreement back to flames.
“I have told you people that that team is a mess. That team is total rubbish. That is the worst Super Eagles team we have ever had. They don’t have attack….they don’t have defense. The midfield is zero. What are we talking about? Cameroon will flog them very well tomorrow.” When Papa Ngozi spoke, his Adams apple jumped up and down his throat like a bowling ball gliding down a bowling alley.
“Look at what you are saying” Ikot lashed out. “You say the team is rubbish, how then did they get to the finals?”
“You are talking as if it was not me and you that watched the semi finals together. Common Angola. Co..mmooon Angola. When did Angola start playing soccer eh? Common Angola they could not win. Rubbish Super Chickens. Have you forgotten how you were shouting like somebody who just received the news that his container sank in the high sea when we were watching that match?
“Important thing is that they finally won abi” Ikot asks looking in my direction for support. I made a sound in my throat and flipped to a new page of the paper I was going through.
“Through penalties.” Papa Ngozi remarked the sarcasm in his voice as evident as cold on a harmattan morning. “Penalties can be anybody’s game. Let me tell you, you see all this small small boys that play ball along the streets, when it comes to penalty, they can defeat even Brazil. Isn’t it shameful that despite our home advantage, still they couldn’t win normally. I don tell una, Cameroon will disgrace us on our own soil. All I am saying is that they should at least not spell N.I.G.E.R.I.A. Did you not see how they demolished Egypt…Egypt o, a whole Egypt. Six time champions. They played them ball like small children.”
“Look, football is not like that Papa Ngozi, no be like that. You are talking as though you have forgotten that this is Super Eagles”
“Super nonsense. Can you compare this team with the 1980 team? Haba if it was in those days, the days of the mathematical Segun Odegbami and Chairman Christian Chukwu my mind would have been at rest. I would have been drinking pami by now certain that the cup was in the kitty. But not this team that plays like six pregnant women combined with five men with arthritis.”
The argument went on and on and when it was time for me to take a side, I took the easy way out. I told them either side had a good chance of winning, that while the Cameroonian side had performed better all through the tournament, our team had pride to play for. Then I boasted about having bought a ticket for the match, that I would be watching it live at the stadium. I had stressed the word “live” so as to create the desired effect. As I left the stand thirty minutes later, I had to go in search for a ticket to the match.
The noise in the stadium suddenly reaches a crescendo. Many spectators are up on their feet cheering. The blast of the vuvuzela is deafening. I rise too, clapping and making the woo sound in my mouth. The Players all clad in the traditional green are holding hands and walking into the pitch like a colony of ants migrating in the dry season. I am happy they are wearing green. I remember Ikot’s assurance that as long as the team played with Green jersey, they would do well.
I tilt my head a little to the right to have a clearer view of the team. Tall Guys head is getting in the way. I notice that he is not only tall. His skull also projected out, giving him the look of a popular newspaper cartoon character. I ignore the head and concentrate on the players in the pitch. The President wearing an oversized tracksuit and the AFA President are now shaking hands with the players. The AFA President is a Cameroonian. I remember a comment in one of the papers warning the Super Eagles to be wary of partial officiating.
The Cameroonian anthem plays, more like the sound of a lone organist in a large cathedral. It is barely audible, the melody choked up by the buzzing sound of a thousand vuvuzelas. The players looking thick in their jerseys that hugged closely to their muscular arms had their hands to their chests. I remember Ikom saying that Cameroonians were muscular because they ate only plantain. Plantain in the morning, Plantain as lunch, plantain before bed. As I look at them now, I smile again at Ikots witty comment.
Our anthem comes next. Every body is chanting. Our chant is few notes ahead of the corresponding beat from the stadium speakers. It is the first time I am chanting the national anthem since my Passing Out Parade from Youth Service. I feel something rise to my head from within. It feels like chills. I try not to blink because I feel my eyes welling up.
There is sudden commotion to my right as the police chase the boys who had been dancing around away from the aisle. “We don’t want any body here” I hear one of them shouting and slicing the air with his baton. Others are pushing at the crowd and whipping. A few obey. Majority are offended by the police harsh approach. I sense trouble. More police men come to join their colleagues. The crowd charges back at them. Someone hits back at a police man across the face. He retracts clutching at his face. The excited crowd surges forward. Fists, batons and whips fly in the air. I fear there might be a sudden gun shot from the out numbered police men.
What I hear instead is a sudden shout from the rest of the stadium. I turn my eyes back to the pitch immediately to find our number ‘9’ holding his head with both hands in dramatic display of loss. The match had started while I was watching the commotion and we had just missed a scoring opportunity. There is another shout of regret as the action is played back on the giant electronic board. Both the Policemen and the crowd who were no more fighting joined in the second shout. The fight was over. All eyes were now on the pitch.
I feel boot souls marching in my chest. When I was much younger I loved playing football. We played every evening in the little field behind our compound. All the children in the twenty rooms that made up Baba Sikira’s yard gathered every evening to play. We had a team called Baba Sikira Devils and we often played matches with children from other compounds. My membership of the team was discreet. Father didn’t think any reasonable child should waste his time playing football when there were chores to do at home. So whenever he was around, I would be in the kitchen washing the dishes from the family lunch of amala and draw soup while my friends played. They always had a way of making me regret every game I missed. Next day at school they would go on and on about how sweet the game had been and what beautiful goals were scored.
There is an incident around the Nigerian eighteen yard box. The advancing Cameroonian striker collapses to the ground, writhing from right to left in supposed paid. The Nigerian defender has both hands raised to indicate his innocence. The referee rushes to the scene his right hand in his small breast pocket. My heart skips a beat. The stadium is suddenly silent. A yellow card slices through the air as the referee withdraws his hand. He then points to the penalty spot. Three Nigerian players rush towards him complaining. Their faces are few inches away from his but they don’t touch him. On the other side, the Cameroonian players hug and congratulate each other. The stadium is silent.
“Just imagine this ref” Tall Guy laments his voice like he was set to cry. “There was no contact there at all. How could he give them a penalty?”
Sleeveless shakes his head from side to side then lets out a long hiss. The man sitting by my right grumbles, cursing in a language I could not decipher. The man on my left is shouting into the phone, telling someone at the other end that he was in a noisy place and couldn’t speak now. I feel a part of me give way as I watch the Cameroonian player place the ball on the white patch. It occurs to me that i have felt this way many times before, watching Nigeria play on television.
I remember that match during the world cup in USA. We were up against Italy. I had stayed up late to watch the match and Father had allowed me just because it was football. He loved watching football but wouldn’t let me play it. Whenever there was a match, he would make sure there was fuel in our tiny generator. He would then sit on his favourite chair directly facing the television, a bottle of Star beer in front of him. All through the match, he would offer an alternate commentary, cursing, kicking and cheering the loudest when a goal is scored.
Match days meant a lot to me and my siblings then. It meant for ninety minutes we were safe from scolding and more importantly, we could see Father laugh. The muscles of his face would ease out, his lips will pull apart, and then the croaking sound would come from his throat like a car that was having difficulty coming on. That was usually when we scored. If however we don’t do well, we all vanish from the sitting room as soon as the match was over to avoid bearing the wrath of his disappointment.
That match against Italy, we scored first. It was a long volley from Finidi. Father rose and ran round the room screaming “G.O.A.L”. He was so excited he asked me to bring a glass and share some of his beer. I was only twelve then. In the second half, Italy equalized following an error in our defense. Thereafter, it all seemed like we were heading for a draw when at about ten minutes to the end, an Italian player fell to the ground like a sack of rice right inside our eighteen yard box and the referee awarded a penalty. I sat before the TV almost petrified. I felt life leaving me with the same force as liquid medication being pushed out of a syringe. It is the same way I feel now.
“Over the bar” comes a sudden scream from one of the young ladies sitting behind me. It strikes a chord. Within seconds, the scream is echoing round the stadium. I feel some hope leap into me. The Cameroonian player takes three steps back and looks at the referee for the signal. Our goal keeper bounces about like a monkey at the sight of ripe banana. I hear the whistle blast. I close my eyes and open them. I see a Cameroonian player running to the flank and sliding on the grass in joy. It is exactly how it happened during the match against Italy in USA.
The Stadium comes alive again at halftime. Our players gather in a circle in the center of the pitch to pray. I have always wondered whose prayer God listens to when both teams gather to pray. But I have heard that God is a Nigerian, that it was our own prayers that he listened to. I believed this so as I watch them pray, I mumble my own lines of prayer but I am too shy to make the sign of the cross. I don’t want to give away the impression that I am very attachment to the match. It feels childish and there are ladies around. As the players jog into the tunnel, the trumpet of the Supporters club comes alive with He’s a miracle working God.
“Our midfield is not supplying, that’s the problem.” Tall Guy declares emphatically scratching at his neck. “Our strikers are not getting the ball. He needs to bring in a more attack minded midfielder that can spread passes and create chances. There is no play maker in that team.”
He sounds like a professional coach throwing his hard in the air as he signs the proper position the midfielder should occupy. My ear picks up so many more analysis going on simultaneously. Everyone has the solution. I remember Bro Ehosa’s opinion during Papa Ngozi and Ikot’s argument at his stand the day before that the main problem with our football was that every Nigerian was a coach. Everyone knew what should be done, but no body did what should be done.
Sleeveless does not agree. He says the midfield is okay but that our left wing is not efficient. “Their ‘3’ is not good. Can’t you see how jittery he has been? He plays like he has not eaten today and when he overlaps, he doesn’t return. We really need to exploit that. We need to make more pullouts from that wing.”
My phone rings. It is Danlami my friend during youth service in Zamfara. I can barely hear him but I know why he is calling. He too is yet to get a job and was thinking of coming to Abuja to hunt for a while. He hoped to put up with me when he came. I had been making excuses, telling him I was either travelling out of town or that I had other visitors. The truth is that I don’t own a place. What I had was a room which I shared with two of my siblings. The room was also the sitting room with the TV and chairs. At night we spread the mattress on the floor. The only other room was my parents. Things had gone from bad to worse for us. Father’s sudden retrenchment in what the new FCT minister described as downsizing meant that we could no longer afford a two bedroom flat. We moved into the one bedroom few weeks after I returned from Zamfara. I hadn’t told Danlami about the down turn. I just couldn’t. So I tell him I can’t hear him and end the call.
The players emerge from the break and the vuvezelas welcome them. They gather again to pray. The God of Nigeria responds. We come close to scoring in the first minute of the second half. Sighs of anguish rent the air. I sigh too, the boot soles in my chest rising in threshold. The stadium gradually gets quiet. Most heads are resting in the hollow of their owners palms now. I look at the faces and I see fear mixed with hope.
I peep at the time on the giant electronic board and it is seventy minutes. Someone throws a bottle of water onto the track area surrounding the pitch. Another follows suit. It is an expression of disgust. Soon bottles are flying in the air all around the stadium. The police men below try to keep them from falling into the playing area. Many policemen are hit by the bottles. I wish I had a bottle to throw too…anything to act out my frustration.
A Nigerian player comes face to face with the Cameroonian goal keeper but balloons the ball high above the goal post. Sighs, hisses and curses rent the air. The booing begins. The ball gets to a Nigerian player and the spectators boo. When it gets to a Cameroonian player they cheer. The man to my right shuffles his legs into his leather slippers, gets up and begins to leave. I notice that many seats are now empty with many people walking towards the aisles. Few bottles are still flying in the air. The time on the giant board is eighty five minutes.
I decide against joining the throng leaving. I am going to see this to the end I tell myself. The marching in my chest has ceased. Now there is just a lull. Like there is no heart there. A Nigerian player crosses from the left wing. I rise to my feet as the ball completes its trajectory motion and lands in the goal mouth area of the Cameroonian post. It does not land on the ground. It lands on a Nigerian head which directs it into the Cameroonian post. The scream of G.O.A.L can wake a dead man up. I am screaming and bouncing on my toes. The Nigerian players are dancing at the side line. Sleeveless and Tall Guy are blowing their horns and bouncing. There is a mad rush of people back into the stadium through the aisles. Their rapid steps against the concrete slabs of the stadium cause a vibration. The noise is deafening.
The Booing pattern changes. A Nigerian player gets the ball and they cheer. The ball gets to a Cameroonian and they boo. The sudden change of allegiance amazes me. A song breaks out; All we are saying, give us more Goals. Everyone is chanting in unison. Policemen and spectators. Christians and Muslims. Bachelors and Married women. Igbos and Kanuris. Yoruba and Hausas. Employed and unemployed. Rich and the poor. The song is the same; All we are saying, give us more Goals.
The ball moves into the Cameroonian half. The Nigerian midfielder beats one. He moves to beat the second but losses the ball. The Cameroonian hesitates before kicking the ball away. The Nigerian wins the ball back. He looks up and finds a green shirt waiting to his right. He kicks the ball to him. The ball rolls down the flank towards the edge of the touch line. The Nigerian player gets to it, pushes it forward and looks up. He sees three green shirts in the Cameroonian eighteen yard box and makes a cross. I feel my heart beating in my throat. The ball is headed out by a Cameroonian defender. It lands just at the feet of a Nigerian. He takes a shot. The ball flies through the air at great speed and takes a deflection. Tall Guys head gets in the way. I don’t see where the ball ends but I hear the scream; G.O.A.L!!!
Half of the Cameroonian players are sitting on the grass pitch. The Nigerian players are heaped like a pack of refuse in a dump at the edge of the pitch. One of the assistant coaches is carrying our chief coach in his arms like an infant. The referee is trying to call the players back. The Police are struggling to keep the fans from jumping into the pitch. The concrete slab of the stadium vibrates. The noise is like that of a quarry site. The time on the giant board is ninety minutes.
The match resumes. The Cameroonian players pass the ball around. They don’t seem eager to go forward. The referee looks at his wrist. I see him take the whistle to his mouth. The scream continues. Only the players hear the whistle. The Nigerian bench runs into the pitch. The Cameroonians collapse one by one unto the grass pulling off their jerseys. I feel like I am gliding in the sky. The carnival resumes in the stands. As the players line up to receive their medals I remember the troubles of getting a danfo back home. I rise up and begin to walk towards the exit aisle elbowing my way through dancing spectators. As I descend the stairs, I think of dinner.
END
AUTHOR BIO
Sylva Nze Ifedigbo was born in Abuja Nigeria in 1984. He attended the School for the Gifted Abuja and the University of Nigeria, Nsukka where he studied Veterinary Medicine. With strong interest in fiction writing and Socio-political essays, his works have appeared in many journals and magazines for which he has won awards. He contributes to NEXT Newspapers Nigeria and several online e-zines and runs a personal blog ‘Nzesylva’ on wordpress.
