KAMPALA, Uganda – Picture this: your favourite scribe is checking in at a dingy, zero-star hotel in downtown Kampala for a ten-day stint in this city. I have just flown in from Nairobi, after a stopover in Cairo and Khartoum, and a long and nerve-racking bus ride from Entebbe. I am not in the best of moods, as you may well imagine. But guess what, a colour desktop poster plugging VISA cards has just made my day.
Captain Rigobert Song Bahanack, the Lions’ skipper, wearing his trademark number 4 jersey, is front and center on this poster celebrating a goal with all the rage and determination he has been known for. You have read me perfectly. Our own Song. Not Zidane, not Beckham, not Thierry Henry. People, we are talking of Uganda, in deepest Africa, hardly a football land, challenged by strife and poverty. From Gulu, in Acholi land to Mbarara, posters and other paraphernalia featuring our beloved Lions are everywhere.
You can buy a Lions’ jersey in Kampala as easily as in Nkololun. They are everywhere, even bad replicas of the loathed UniQt are readily available and sell as hot cakes. I beg to be excused for not stocking up on them, as you know how much I loathe and despise this stupid attire that typifies, sorry to insist, everything that is wrong with Cameroon. Entrenched corrupt behaviour, lack of moral responsibility, shortsightedness, greed.
The Ugandans, of course, do not care so much about this scourge of ours. They love our team. You feel it in it the way they look at your passport, in the unavoidable question about the FIFA penalty they have asked so many times, in their concern and sorrow about Mboma leaving the squad. You feel they would love to keep you there talking about our game, about our chances for the next World Cup, but they don’t want to bother you, out of sheer respect and admiration.
For the more obtuse in the small coterie of my readership, a translation is in order. Cameroon’s Lions Indomptables have become an institution and now belong to the world, just as do the Great Wall of China and the Rock of Gibraltar. We are big in improbable places like Vientiane, Laos, to mainstream football-crazed areas like Nicaragua or Libya.
But do we realize this? Do we care? Does anyone, from Etoudi to the Fécafoot offices, realize that we have a great thing going here, a benevolent possession that must be protected, cared for? Institutions must be protected at all costs, otherwise they die. Due to negligence and self-destruction bias, we have put the Lions on a skid to sure eventual extinction.
Case in point: the sorry episode with FIFA. I must confess here that, contrary to my editors at Camfoot and other pundits, I never believed that there was an international conspiracy against us. I still believe that we were duly warned about repeatedly breaking clear-cut and commonly-agreed to rules, but decided, with our legendary arrogance, to ignore the warnings. We did put ourselves in a position to be publicly flogged, and the puny Swiss at the helm of FIFA dutifully obliged.
He went for our collective jugular and slapped us with an outrageous, albeit deserved, penalty. The penalty obviously couldn’t stand unchanged. We knew that, and Blatter knew that. His agenda was elsewhere: to humiliate and brutalize us. And boy, did we ever get bruised! We begged, down on our bare knees, we invoked global sympathy. It was nauseating. Magnanimous Blatter pardoned us, and right away, the gloating started from the Cameroon quarters. We have no shame.
We were humiliated because we let them humiliate us. We let Puma play with our national pride and treasure, for no great compelling reasons. We were the pawns of a game masterminded by a jersey manufacturer. How could Iya, Bidoung, Atangana, Milla and all the others relinquish the ultimate and total control to the hands of an outsider like Puma? Do they not understand that their job is to protect, at all costs, the trademark football team we have?
We are comfortably sitting on the 12th rung of the world’s football scale. Ahead of England, I must add. England, people, not Malta nor Sierra Leone, where the game of football originated! Isn’t that cause enough to do everything humanly possible to preserve our reputation and keep our eyes firmly glued to the ultimate prize, namely a World Cup championship win? Please, somebody wake them up in Yaoundé!
I have a personal theory on this very Cameroonian urge to destroy everything of value this land ever had. We destroy all our worthwhile possessions simply because we never really worked for them in the first place. The Lions just got thrown upon us, by accident or by the grace of God. We never put too much effort in getting together or nurturing the highly gifted generation of footballers we have had in the last 30 years. In Cameroon, nobody believes that extra and continuous effort will bring about added benefits. We are boorish, mouthy and inefficient under-achievers.
Well, then, since we have no shame, a little suggestion. How about setting up an international competition for the top job at Fécafoot? How about scouring the earth in search of a manager with a proven track record whose responsibility will be to preserve and protect our Lions, see to their development and guard against further disrepute befalling to our house? Somebody with vision, with a clear programme. Somebody accountable and with the necessary authority to make decisions. Somebody who will be judged based on his achievements. Somebody we could fire in case of failure. Why not?
By L. Ndogkoti
