ENYIMBA: FROM GLORY TO GLOOM

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By Sam Nnaji

Perhaps the best way to start this withering review of the current fortunes of Enyimba football club (let’s be real: the ‘International’ tag has always been ridiculous, and is even more so now) is, actually, to draw on a past event.

It was told to me once that, during a Champions League campaign of a certain year, the club was scheduled to host [redacted] from North Africa. The opponent, familiar with Enyimba’s pedigree – back-to-back CAF CL successes in the mid-2000s – understandably approached the tie with trembling, fearing the worst.

However, when they arrived in Aba, and more specifically when their bus pulled into the stadium complex, they could scarcely believe what they were seeing, and immediately suspected some shifty business was being perpetrated. You see, based on the club’s success, they had built in their own minds a myth, complete with expectations of glorious infrastructure. So, how could a team that had won back-to-back CAF CLs and consistently competed on the continent for over a decade have such shoddy, run-down facilities. It had to be part of a ploy to derail their preparations!

Funny as that anecdote is, it is both true and sobering, the latter in more ways than one. First of all, for all that it says about the gross mismanagement that has plagued the club since it wrote its name into the history books 20 years ago. Secondly, for the fact that said event took place under the previous administration.

Things are several orders of magnitude worse right now.

The debacle of Maputo has served to properly place the issues within Enyimba front and centre, exposing the sheer incompetence of the people tasked with running its affairs. Logistics are the most basic of arrangements. Heck, they can be outsourced months in advance and run like clockwork. Instead, we had a delegation stuck in southern Africa like refugees; given the shambles behind the scenes, it is unlikely they even had the means to treat it like an extended vacation.

Nwankwo Kanu and Ifeanyi Ekwueme may be former Nigeria internationals who played professionally in some of the finest leagues in Europe but, as a duo, they have sung some truly awful notes. Nigeria’s pride is now a laughing stock. Ichabod. I mean, even the club’s attempt to save face was done in hamfisted fashion. Imagine being too inept to wipe one’s own buttocks.

Now, while Kanu was always a ‘celebrity’ appointment by the Alex Otti administration, and in the eyes of many a change was needed from the Felix Anyansi-Agwu hegemony, the decision of the former Ajax and Arsenal man to appoint Ekwueme has eroded even the remnant of that aura that had been built up since the turn of the century.

The subject of identity is on the abstract end of the spectrum in Nigerian football circles at the best of times. However, if there is one thing that defined Enyimba’s success down the years, it was the determination with which they pursued the best and brightest in the land.

You wished they would broaden their horizons every now and again but, in the end, the elite talent in the local scene always pooled in Aba, and that guaranteed a consistent stream of success.

That is no longer the case. Largely, the composition of the Enyimba squad has taken on an experimental appearance. Prospects, unheralded and untested, are the order of the day, a factor that has not only affected performances on the pitch, but that has, as a result, served to drive the fans away from the stadium. Nothing galvanises fans quite like seeing genuine superstars grace their club’s colours. As a wise man once said, when people get used to the taste of caviar, it is difficult to get them to return to sausages. Said sage works in FIFA these days, I believe…

In defiance of his name, Ekwueme, in whose hands the fortunes of this once-great club have been placed, has done neither talking nor acting. Often, wisdom is in knowing one’s own limitations and leaning on the knowledge of the pre-existing. However, no one can accuse Enyimba’s sporting director of such: his reluctance to, at the very least, leave certain processes in place and rely on the human capacity present within the club has led to sundry problems.

Players’ salaries being withheld in spite of government disbursement is one thing, and a sadly common one within the context of Nigerian football, but can you imagine players going without food during an away trip? Basic nourishment!

Knowing some of the ugliness behind the scenes, it is to the credit of coach Yemi Olanrewaju that Enyimba remains competitive on the pitch in any proper sense. Some of the NPFL’s greatest managers have sat in the club’s dugout through the years, and all of them have had the benefit of ultra-motivated superstar squads. To hand one of the youngest managers in the division such an anaemic squad and such terrible circumstances is the equivalent of asking a child to bear hot coals in his hands. Yet, with 3 games fewer played than almost everyone else, the club is only 10 points adrift and boasts the league’s best defence.

If only everyone else was similarly pulling their own weight…

The club now has the air of a woman learning to be left-handed in her old age; what’s worse is that Ekwueme, though a southpaw himself, is a miserable teacher. And so she lurches from draw to disgrace, barely keeping her footing, slowly becoming a mockery of her former glory.

Soon enough, the faded wrapper keeping what remains of her dignity will slide off, mythos giving way to stark reality and dismay.

Nnaji is based in the United States and runs a blog ‘That Enyimba Fan’