By: Peregrino Brimah

Why did I tell my friends that I hoped and prayed
Nigeria soon got knocked out of the World Cup?
Why did I jump when France scored its first goal
against Nigeria and dance when they scored the
second? The answer is not that I am not patriotic;
on the contrary, I love Nigerian life as much or more than any. It’s simple – Nigeria did not and
does not deserve to be at the World cup and does
not deserve any sort of ‘victory’ from it.

Where are our girls? Our daughters have been in
the jungle, raped and killed by ‘Shekau’ for three
long months and our adults are running around
a pitch, tapping a leather ball and hoping to
dance victory dances? Do we think of all the girls
with ‘Shekau’ who are fans of the national team and would have loved to be watching the
matches at home as we are? Do we imagine how
life is for them… now they have practically
acclimatized and accepted their destiny as the
‘prostitutes’ of randy terrorists? Do we imagine
what their families – also soccer fans – are going through as we relax and enjoy the world cup
games? If we did, where is the evidence?

If it was any other nation, our players would have
requested a minute extra for prayers for all the
victims of Boko Haram – the Nigerian terrorist
group that operates with arms and ammunition
from the nations armory and abducted our girls
and has continued to kill and bomb freely for four years with under the full impunity of our state
security services. But no, our players simply went
to play without any respect or compassion
publicly showed for the victims of state tolerated
and sponsored terror. No, our players did not
wear perhaps, red-colored wrist bands in solidarity with the victims of Boko Haram. No, our
players did not carry #BringBackOurGirls placards
in Brazil, and of course, no, they did not do the
ultimate – refuse to play, damning and staking all
to stand for justice.

What use would a victory have been for us? Who
is ‘us?’ What nation do we have that deserves a
victory? Are we a people? What global
opportunities do we expect to gain from a
football victory? What globe? Is it the same global
players who came to Nigeria to allegedly help us rescue our girls, but rather switched to installing
their agenda in Nigeria immediately they arrived,
forgetting the mission for which they were given
a limited invitation? Is it for accolades and credits
from the same world that has sponsored the
destruction of Libya, Syria, Iraq, Bosnia and what have you… that we want to please by proving we
can play football?

If these innocent girls were kidnapped in any
other nation on earth, an armed search party of
thousands of civilian volunteers would have set
out three months ago to comb the jungles of and
around Sambisa for these girls and the hundreds
of other girls and boys abducted before and after April 14, 2014; but not Nigeria: we all sat down,
at best, carried placards or sent out tweets with a
certain hashtag, and then we bought popcorn
and coca cola and sat back to watch Nigeria ‘win.’



I rejoiced in our loss. We deserved it for more
reasons than one. We are a nation at loss. We are
a lost nation.