₦airaland Forum

Tolubory:
Enough of this Storytelling
South America, Europe all of them do cheat,
So Tell me something that I have Never Hear before...

iliyande:
By Yinka Odumakin

“Yakubu is 25 but a Nigerian 25”—Everton Manager, David Moyes in 2008.

“I don’t see Nigerian football getting out of the quagmire, the problem it is in, today, is because corruption is getting deeper and deeper. From time to time we get flashes where we do well in some competitions with overage players and we celebrate.
That was one of the issues I looked at; we can’t keep using overage players. We used over-age players for junior championships, I know that. Why not say it? It’s the truth. We always cheat. It’s a fact. When you cheat, you deprive the young stars that are supposed to play in these competitions their rights.”— NFA Chairman, Anthony Kojo Williams, in 2000.

JULIUS Agwu is one of my favourite comedians in Nigeria .I love his feminine voice,the crispness of his jokes as well as his delivery. Anytime I am boarding a flight and I call my wife,I usually say “abodu ala o”.I picked that from Julius.He cracked the joke about a flight attendant going around the lounge to announce an aircraft boarding because the public address system was not working during the renovations of the Enugu airport .

The Igbo lady was saying: “A Lagos abodu ala o” There was a passenger billed to fly that plane who did not understand a word in Igbo and therefore sat put while other passengers went to join the queue. About an hour later he went to the A… counter and asked why they had yet to make a boarding call only to be told that the plane had since departed “I went round shouting abodu ala” came from the flight attendant as if every passenger must understand her native tongue.

But his joke that is relevant to what I am discussing today is the one where he talked about some Nigerian team training for an age-grade competition near his house and how he went to one of the players to ask for his age and the response he got was: “Our coach has not given us our age”.

We have just “conquered” the world again in Chile and the drums are rolling in celebration of our lack of character and integrity as a people. Our infinite capacity to conspire in falsehood and pretend that all is well when the reverse is the case is once more being demonstrated even when we don’t blink in reciting our

NATIONAL PLEDGE:

“I pledge to Nigeria my country To be faithful,loyal and HONEST”

We say these and all the other lines(read LIES) even when no one believes in them. We have mastered the art of saying something and doing another because the very foundation of our country is a concrete of lies. Every action we take is built on falsehood because we just can’t do it right. Cheating our ways to corner undeserved advantages has become a national culture because we have not been able to construct a national vision.

After 55 years we still cannot count ourselves because an accurate census would minimise our ability to cheat. Our examinations have become a farce as parents even buy questions for their wards and pay for admissions. We beat traffic rules if there is nobody in sight to enforce them.Our politicians forge certificates to contest elections. Our vote counts conflict with actual vote cast. Judges take bribes to pervert Justice. Priests and Imams negate moral values. The “how “ no longer matter to us and yet we pray that our country should succeed .

We can occasionally have some fake success but not good success because we break all the rules of success as natural cheats. We deploy kids to vote in elections where adults should participate when we want to cheat internally and assemble adults to go and compete with kids globally when we want to cheat internationally. This is why we are celebrating 22 men who went to an unequal competition with only whispers about the actual ages of our boys.

Physical appearance
Mere physical appearances of our boys should tell any honest person that the suspicion about true ages of some Nigerian footballers which made FIFA to ban the country from all international fixtures for two years after finding that the birth dates of three of our players in the 1988 Olympics were different from ones used by the same players in previous tournaments is still very much with us.

Nigeria has over the years paraded promising “ youngsters” who mysteriously failed to fulfill their potential in the senior teams. Phillip Osondu was the best player at the 1987 Under-17 World Cup, after which he was signed on by Anderlecht, only to drift out of the game and into janitorial work after questions were raised about his real age. Femi Opabunmi shone brilliantly when Nigeria played in the finals of the Under-17 competition in 2001 and was officially the third youngest player in the senior team when he featured in the 0-0 game with England during the 2002 World Cup. But by 2005 he had expired doing only part-time soccer in some unrated team in lower rungs of the French league.

Adokiye Amiesimaka questioned the inclusion of Golden Eaglets captain Fortune Chukwudi during the 2009 Under 17 championship . Amiesimaka in an unusual candor bared his mind after Nigeria’s opening 3-3 draw with Germany at the Abuja National Stadium on October 24. “In the 2002/2003 season, I was chairman of Sharks Football Club of Port Harcourt. I decided to have a feeder team of fresh school leavers not older than 20 years.

One of my key players then is the current captain of our so-called Under-17 Golden Eaglets. By his own admission at that time, that is seven years ago, he was 18 years old…If we are not utterly irresponsible, how can he be eligible for this tournament when he is not less than 25 years old now?” Amiesimaka wrote in the Punch newspaper. Chukwudi played till the Eaglets final match and fizzled out thereafter. But since corruption is official in Nigeria,there was no whimper from our officials .
I read on The Cable in June this year of how Taye Taiwo’s twin sister allegedly celebrated her 39th birthday the day Taiwo was doing his own 27th.There was also the story of Samson Siasia cutting the cake of his 30th wedding anniversary at the age of 47!





So what do we do!!

What do you want to achieve.

We have the cup already so what do we do with this your write up?
About the most hilarious was that of Dele Ajiboye who exposed the lie over his age when he featured in the Under-17 tournament in 2007″.In the chat(with Soccer Star) the Golden Eaglets gold medal-winning goalkeeper in the FIFA U-17 World Cup in 2007 inadvertently revealed he was older than he claimed eight years earlier. When asked about his role model as a professional goalkeeper, the Kwara United keeper revealed the person without much fuss. “I have many role models.

Anyone I learn from is my role model,” he said. “I could remember when I was still a young boy, I do watch Peter Rufai and I learnt a lot from him.” Ajiboye is 25 now and 17 in 2007, but we doubt he was referring to the Peter Rufai of 1998 World Cup. Nobody learnt anything fruitful and meaningful from Rufai of 1998. Even Ajiboye at age eight couldn’t have learnt anything worthy from the fumbling Dodo Mayana except, of course, how to make cheap goals look spectacular. Then, we are assuming Ajiboye was referring to the Rufai of 1994 Africa Cup of Nations and World Cup. But in 1994, Ajiboye was four!”
James Spencer in an article traced age fraud in the Premier League to African players: “Age fraud came to prominence in the Premier League from the mid-1990s onwards, as clubs began looking more and more at emerging African players. Several former Premier League players from Nigeria alone have been suspected of such misrepresentation.

Nwankwo Kanu is a legend of African football and became a cult hero in England playing for clubs like Arsenal and Portsmouth. The tall forward won the Champions League with Ajax in 1995, but was always suspected to be as much as nine years older than his stated age. Speaking in 2010, Harry Redknapp jokingly exaggerated that Kanu was 49, though given how he described ever increasing ailments and the need for treatment, there seemed to be a shred of authenticity to his words.

Former Newcastle United striker Obafemi Martins was also at the centre of an age row. The player had spectacularly burst onto the scene with Inter Milan as a youngster, but failed to make the most of his talent, suggesting he could already have been much older than stated. In 2005, while Martins was still in Italy, the Nigerian Football Federation claimed he was actually born in 1978, though his player registration stated it was 1984.

National failure
Similar stories also exist for both Jay-Jay Okocha and Taribo West who plied their trade in the Premier League for Bolton Wanderers and Derby County, respectively.

Throughout his career, Okocha was rumoured to be 10 years older than his official age. Following his departure from Derby in 2001, West allegedly told Partizan Belgrade that he was only 28, though given the state of his body the club had strong suspicions that he was 40.

It may not occur to us that our national failure is the sum total of all these little acts of dishonesty .I recall a Dutch-journalist friend of mine who I was driving along the Airport Road in 1998 and saw a fellow peeing on the road. He looked at the guy and said to me: “If that man cannot see anything wrong urinating on the roadside,he would do other 1000 things that are not right and would not see nothing wrong”.

We shall engage in this hollow rituals of celebrating our “victory” but we know in the inner recesses of our minds that is all a fluke because we didn’t do it right. Scoundrels posing as patriots would even abuse this writer for writing the truth. That majority is wrong should not desist the minority that is right from saying it as it is.

The truth must be told even if heavens fall: It is only righteousness that exalts a nation.
cc; lalasticlala ,ishilove
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/11/papa-eaglets-and-our-cheating-culture/

Chestar5:
Naija dey try now, abi una no see that mali guy


My sister was lyk, if this guy is 17 den am 22

efilefun:
I could remember the final Nigeria Played against Spain in 2007, Akinsola and Chrisantus lead the team from front... Akinsola claimed to be 16 years during the tournament but the dude got 2kids at home already, Never knew life was so easy in Nigeria a 16 year old kid would think of starting a family. Check the Spanish team that lost that final match to Nigeria We got David Degea, Asier Illarramendi, Bojan Krkić, Nacho,and many more and they still playing active football in top class teams while you can't point to a Nigerian player of that set playing in a good European club... Hazard and Benteke played that same tournament, but where are the Tella Golden Boys?

PBundles:
Reading some of the responses shows why we have issues in that country EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT OP HAS SAID IS THE TRUTH!!! See Nigerians, God help us, we will see something bent and try to straighten it.

To be honest other countries do it also, especially South American and other African countries.Its virtually impossible in Europe though there have been incidental cases. But the OP was focusing on Nigeria.

Anyway why am I surprised, in a country where Rotimi Amaechi stood in front of a screening panel and said I NEVER STOLE ANY MONEY, its ok I hear una.

shopandmall:
I do not totally agree with you. Yes we cheated in the past, were got by FIFA and punished for it. in modern day football, particularly in the past 5 - 7 years it would have been absolutely impossible for any male team participating in the FIFA world cup to cheat. Why you may ask? FIFA as research into technology using MRI scan for under 17s. This presently applies to only the boys. And using the fussing of the wrist they can detect male players that are above or below 17. That technology was used at the last world cup to confirm that all those who participated where not above 17 years.


http://www.fifa.com/development/news/y=2009/m=10/news=caught-the-wrists-1121679.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2465442/

OnankpaBa:
GERRAHERE

Chukzyfcb:
What is wrong with ur mentality? Do you watch football atall Did germany not thrash brazil 7-0? Was it believable. When Bayern thumped barcelona 7-0 aggregate, was it not shocking? Lemme tell you that during the Introduction of the MRI scan, our NFF didn't approve it. Because the MRI scan disqualified over 15players when it found out we had overaged squad as of 2009. If MRI scan were to be seen as rubbish why did our NFF quarrel with it? The boys did well jare. Overaged cheatsare for sets before 2009 when MRI scan hadn't existed in the youth championship

himkers:
Buhari is a cheat and their role model; they are only looking up to him - Lai Moh'd

iliyande:
By Yinka Odumakin

“Yakubu is 25 but a Nigerian 25”—Everton Manager, David Moyes in 2008.

“I don’t see Nigerian football getting out of the quagmire, the problem it is in, today, is because corruption is getting deeper and deeper. From time to time we get flashes where we do well in some competitions with overage players and we celebrate.
That was one of the issues I looked at; we can’t keep using overage players. We used over-age players for junior championships, I know that. Why not say it? It’s the truth. We always cheat. It’s a fact. When you cheat, you deprive the young stars that are supposed to play in these competitions their rights.”— NFA Chairman, Anthony Kojo Williams, in 2000.

JULIUS Agwu is one of my favourite comedians in Nigeria .I love his feminine voice,the crispness of his jokes as well as his delivery. Anytime I am boarding a flight and I call my wife,I usually say “abodu ala o”.I picked that from Julius.He cracked the joke about a flight attendant going around the lounge to announce an aircraft boarding because the public address system was not working during the renovations of the Enugu airport .

The Igbo lady was saying: “A Lagos abodu ala o” There was a passenger billed to fly that plane who did not understand a word in Igbo and therefore sat put while other passengers went to join the queue. About an hour later he went to the A… counter and asked why they had yet to make a boarding call only to be told that the plane had since departed “I went round shouting abodu ala” came from the flight attendant as if every passenger must understand her native tongue.

But his joke that is relevant to what I am discussing today is the one where he talked about some Nigerian team training for an age-grade competition near his house and how he went to one of the players to ask for his age and the response he got was: “Our coach has not given us our age”.

We have just “conquered” the world again in Chile and the drums are rolling in celebration of our lack of character and integrity as a people. Our infinite capacity to conspire in falsehood and pretend that all is well when the reverse is the case is once more being demonstrated even when we don’t blink in reciting our

NATIONAL PLEDGE:

“I pledge to Nigeria my country To be faithful,loyal and HONEST”

We say these and all the other lines(read LIES) even when no one believes in them. We have mastered the art of saying something and doing another because the very foundation of our country is a concrete of lies. Every action we take is built on falsehood because we just can’t do it right. Cheating our ways to corner undeserved advantages has become a national culture because we have not been able to construct a national vision.

After 55 years we still cannot count ourselves because an accurate census would minimise our ability to cheat. Our examinations have become a farce as parents even buy questions for their wards and pay for admissions. We beat traffic rules if there is nobody in sight to enforce them.Our politicians forge certificates to contest elections. Our vote counts conflict with actual vote cast. Judges take bribes to pervert Justice. Priests and Imams negate moral values. The “how “ no longer matter to us and yet we pray that our country should succeed .

We can occasionally have some fake success but not good success because we break all the rules of success as natural cheats. We deploy kids to vote in elections where adults should participate when we want to cheat internally and assemble adults to go and compete with kids globally when we want to cheat internationally. This is why we are celebrating 22 men who went to an unequal competition with only whispers about the actual ages of our boys.

Physical appearance
Mere physical appearances of our boys should tell any honest person that the suspicion about true ages of some Nigerian footballers which made FIFA to ban the country from all international fixtures for two years after finding that the birth dates of three of our players in the 1988 Olympics were different from ones used by the same players in previous tournaments is still very much with us.

Nigeria has over the years paraded promising “ youngsters” who mysteriously failed to fulfill their potential in the senior teams. Phillip Osondu was the best player at the 1987 Under-17 World Cup, after which he was signed on by Anderlecht, only to drift out of the game and into janitorial work after questions were raised about his real age. Femi Opabunmi shone brilliantly when Nigeria played in the finals of the Under-17 competition in 2001 and was officially the third youngest player in the senior team when he featured in the 0-0 game with England during the 2002 World Cup. But by 2005 he had expired doing only part-time soccer in some unrated team in lower rungs of the French league.

Adokiye Amiesimaka questioned the inclusion of Golden Eaglets captain Fortune Chukwudi during the 2009 Under 17 championship . Amiesimaka in an unusual candor bared his mind after Nigeria’s opening 3-3 draw with Germany at the Abuja National Stadium on October 24. “In the 2002/2003 season, I was chairman of Sharks Football Club of Port Harcourt. I decided to have a feeder team of fresh school leavers not older than 20 years.

One of my key players then is the current captain of our so-called Under-17 Golden Eaglets. By his own admission at that time, that is seven years ago, he was 18 years old…If we are not utterly irresponsible, how can he be eligible for this tournament when he is not less than 25 years old now?” Amiesimaka wrote in the Punch newspaper. Chukwudi played till the Eaglets final match and fizzled out thereafter. But since corruption is official in Nigeria,there was no whimper from our officials .
I read on The Cable in June this year of how Taye Taiwo’s twin sister allegedly celebrated her 39th birthday the day Taiwo was doing his own 27th.There was also the story of Samson Siasia cutting the cake of his 30th wedding anniversary at the age of 47!

About the most hilarious was that of Dele Ajiboye who exposed the lie over his age when he featured in the Under-17 tournament in 2007″.In the chat(with Soccer Star) the Golden Eaglets gold medal-winning goalkeeper in the FIFA U-17 World Cup in 2007 inadvertently revealed he was older than he claimed eight years earlier. When asked about his role model as a professional goalkeeper, the Kwara United keeper revealed the person without much fuss. “I have many role models.

Anyone I learn from is my role model,” he said. “I could remember when I was still a young boy, I do watch Peter Rufai and I learnt a lot from him.” Ajiboye is 25 now and 17 in 2007, but we doubt he was referring to the Peter Rufai of 1998 World Cup. Nobody learnt anything fruitful and meaningful from Rufai of 1998. Even Ajiboye at age eight couldn’t have learnt anything worthy from the fumbling Dodo Mayana except, of course, how to make cheap goals look spectacular. Then, we are assuming Ajiboye was referring to the Rufai of 1994 Africa Cup of Nations and World Cup. But in 1994, Ajiboye was four!”
James Spencer in an article traced age fraud in the Premier League to African players: “Age fraud came to prominence in the Premier League from the mid-1990s onwards, as clubs began looking more and more at emerging African players. Several former Premier League players from Nigeria alone have been suspected of such misrepresentation.

Nwankwo Kanu is a legend of African football and became a cult hero in England playing for clubs like Arsenal and Portsmouth. The tall forward won the Champions League with Ajax in 1995, but was always suspected to be as much as nine years older than his stated age. Speaking in 2010, Harry Redknapp jokingly exaggerated that Kanu was 49, though given how he described ever increasing ailments and the need for treatment, there seemed to be a shred of authenticity to his words.

Former Newcastle United striker Obafemi Martins was also at the centre of an age row. The player had spectacularly burst onto the scene with Inter Milan as a youngster, but failed to make the most of his talent, suggesting he could already have been much older than stated. In 2005, while Martins was still in Italy, the Nigerian Football Federation claimed he was actually born in 1978, though his player registration stated it was 1984.

National failure
Similar stories also exist for both Jay-Jay Okocha and Taribo West who plied their trade in the Premier League for Bolton Wanderers and Derby County, respectively.

Throughout his career, Okocha was rumoured to be 10 years older than his official age. Following his departure from Derby in 2001, West allegedly told Partizan Belgrade that he was only 28, though given the state of his body the club had strong suspicions that he was 40.

It may not occur to us that our national failure is the sum total of all these little acts of dishonesty .I recall a Dutch-journalist friend of mine who I was driving along the Airport Road in 1998 and saw a fellow peeing on the road. He looked at the guy and said to me: “If that man cannot see anything wrong urinating on the roadside,he would do other 1000 things that are not right and would not see nothing wrong”.

We shall engage in this hollow rituals of celebrating our “victory” but we know in the inner recesses of our minds that is all a fluke because we didn’t do it right. Scoundrels posing as patriots would even abuse this writer for writing the truth. That majority is wrong should not desist the minority that is right from saying it as it is.

The truth must be told even if heavens fall: It is only righteousness that exalts a nation.
cc; lalasticlala ,ishilove
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/11/papa-eaglets-and-our-cheating-culture/

Benz4pimp:
Most peepz typing thrash don't even know how that MRI works,it's never done by FIFA,it is done by local football bodies.to scale through,all you need is eat fruits and cereals for 1 month or more and you will scale that test.

PBundles:
Reading some of the responses shows why we have issues in that country EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT OP HAS SAID IS THE TRUTH!!! See Nigerians, God help us, we will see something bent and try to straighten it.

To be honest other countries do it also, especially South American and other African countries.Its virtually impossible in Europe though there have been incidental cases. But the OP was focusing on Nigeria.

Anyway why am I surprised, in a country where Rotimi Amaechi stood in front of a screening panel and said I NEVER STOLE ANY MONEY, its ok I hear una.

ddippset:
You're 100% sure that other countries cheat and that Rotimi amaechi has stolen money! Yet you're also 100 % sure the op is wrong in his assertion. It's either you're playing God, or you're God Himself. Nonsense!

Binb:
Nigeria beat Brazil 3:0 at the just concluded U-17 world Cup , Do you honestly believe the Super Eagles can beat Brazil senior national Team 3:0?

Nigeria u-17 beat Mexico 6:0 in 2013, do you think Super Eagle can beat their Mexican counterpart 6:0?!

bigwallace:
lol, I laugh at your ignorance let's call a spade a spade wt is bad is bad,our football won't grow with this win at all cost mentality.the real u17 re in our secondary schools,just roger that.

iliyande:
By Yinka Odumakin

“Yakubu is 25 but a Nigerian 25”—Everton Manager, David Moyes in 2008.

“I don’t see Nigerian football getting out of the quagmire, the problem it is in, today, is because corruption is getting deeper and deeper. From time to time we get flashes where we do well in some competitions with overage players and we celebrate.
That was one of the issues I looked at; we can’t keep using overage players. We used over-age players for junior championships, I know that. Why not say it? It’s the truth. We always cheat. It’s a fact. When you cheat, you deprive the young stars that are supposed to play in these competitions their rights.”— NFA Chairman, Anthony Kojo Williams, in 2000.

JULIUS Agwu is one of my favourite comedians in Nigeria .I love his feminine voice,the crispness of his jokes as well as his delivery. Anytime I am boarding a flight and I call my wife,I usually say “abodu ala o”.I picked that from Julius.He cracked the joke about a flight attendant going around the lounge to announce an aircraft boarding because the public address system was not working during the renovations of the Enugu airport .

The Igbo lady was saying: “A Lagos abodu ala o” There was a passenger billed to fly that plane who did not understand a word in Igbo and therefore sat put while other passengers went to join the queue. About an hour later he went to the A… counter and asked why they had yet to make a boarding call only to be told that the plane had since departed “I went round shouting abodu ala” came from the flight attendant as if every passenger must understand her native tongue.

But his joke that is relevant to what I am discussing today is the one where he talked about some Nigerian team training for an age-grade competition near his house and how he went to one of the players to ask for his age and the response he got was: “Our coach has not given us our age”.

We have just “conquered” the world again in Chile and the drums are rolling in celebration of our lack of character and integrity as a people. Our infinite capacity to conspire in falsehood and pretend that all is well when the reverse is the case is once more being demonstrated even when we don’t blink in reciting our

NATIONAL PLEDGE:

“I pledge to Nigeria my country To be faithful,loyal and HONEST”

We say these and all the other lines(read LIES) even when no one believes in them. We have mastered the art of saying something and doing another because the very foundation of our country is a concrete of lies. Every action we take is built on falsehood because we just can’t do it right. Cheating our ways to corner undeserved advantages has become a national culture because we have not been able to construct a national vision.

After 55 years we still cannot count ourselves because an accurate census would minimise our ability to cheat. Our examinations have become a farce as parents even buy questions for their wards and pay for admissions. We beat traffic rules if there is nobody in sight to enforce them.Our politicians forge certificates to contest elections. Our vote counts conflict with actual vote cast. Judges take bribes to pervert Justice. Priests and Imams negate moral values. The “how “ no longer matter to us and yet we pray that our country should succeed .

We can occasionally have some fake success but not good success because we break all the rules of success as natural cheats. We deploy kids to vote in elections where adults should participate when we want to cheat internally and assemble adults to go and compete with kids globally when we want to cheat internationally. This is why we are celebrating 22 men who went to an unequal competition with only whispers about the actual ages of our boys.

Physical appearance
Mere physical appearances of our boys should tell any honest person that the suspicion about true ages of some Nigerian footballers which made FIFA to ban the country from all international fixtures for two years after finding that the birth dates of three of our players in the 1988 Olympics were different from ones used by the same players in previous tournaments is still very much with us.

Nigeria has over the years paraded promising “ youngsters” who mysteriously failed to fulfill their potential in the senior teams. Phillip Osondu was the best player at the 1987 Under-17 World Cup, after which he was signed on by Anderlecht, only to drift out of the game and into janitorial work after questions were raised about his real age. Femi Opabunmi shone brilliantly when Nigeria played in the finals of the Under-17 competition in 2001 and was officially the third youngest player in the senior team when he featured in the 0-0 game with England during the 2002 World Cup. But by 2005 he had expired doing only part-time soccer in some unrated team in lower rungs of the French league.

Adokiye Amiesimaka questioned the inclusion of Golden Eaglets captain Fortune Chukwudi during the 2009 Under 17 championship . Amiesimaka in an unusual candor bared his mind after Nigeria’s opening 3-3 draw with Germany at the Abuja National Stadium on October 24. “In the 2002/2003 season, I was chairman of Sharks Football Club of Port Harcourt. I decided to have a feeder team of fresh school leavers not older than 20 years.

One of my key players then is the current captain of our so-called Under-17 Golden Eaglets. By his own admission at that time, that is seven years ago, he was 18 years old…If we are not utterly irresponsible, how can he be eligible for this tournament when he is not less than 25 years old now?” Amiesimaka wrote in the Punch newspaper. Chukwudi played till the Eaglets final match and fizzled out thereafter. But since corruption is official in Nigeria,there was no whimper from our officials .
I read on The Cable in June this year of how Taye Taiwo’s twin sister allegedly celebrated her 39th birthday the day Taiwo was doing his own 27th.There was also the story of Samson Siasia cutting the cake of his 30th wedding anniversary at the age of 47!

About the most hilarious was that of Dele Ajiboye who exposed the lie over his age when he featured in the Under-17 tournament in 2007″.In the chat(with Soccer Star) the Golden Eaglets gold medal-winning goalkeeper in the FIFA U-17 World Cup in 2007 inadvertently revealed he was older than he claimed eight years earlier. When asked about his role model as a professional goalkeeper, the Kwara United keeper revealed the person without much fuss. “I have many role models.

Anyone I learn from is my role model,” he said. “I could remember when I was still a young boy, I do watch Peter Rufai and I learnt a lot from him.” Ajiboye is 25 now and 17 in 2007, but we doubt he was referring to the Peter Rufai of 1998 World Cup. Nobody learnt anything fruitful and meaningful from Rufai of 1998. Even Ajiboye at age eight couldn’t have learnt anything worthy from the fumbling Dodo Mayana except, of course, how to make cheap goals look spectacular. Then, we are assuming Ajiboye was referring to the Rufai of 1994 Africa Cup of Nations and World Cup. But in 1994, Ajiboye was four!”
James Spencer in an article traced age fraud in the Premier League to African players: “Age fraud came to prominence in the Premier League from the mid-1990s onwards, as clubs began looking more and more at emerging African players. Several former Premier League players from Nigeria alone have been suspected of such misrepresentation.

Nwankwo Kanu is a legend of African football and became a cult hero in England playing for clubs like Arsenal and Portsmouth. The tall forward won the Champions League with Ajax in 1995, but was always suspected to be as much as nine years older than his stated age. Speaking in 2010, Harry Redknapp jokingly exaggerated that Kanu was 49, though given how he described ever increasing ailments and the need for treatment, there seemed to be a shred of authenticity to his words.

Former Newcastle United striker Obafemi Martins was also at the centre of an age row. The player had spectacularly burst onto the scene with Inter Milan as a youngster, but failed to make the most of his talent, suggesting he could already have been much older than stated. In 2005, while Martins was still in Italy, the Nigerian Football Federation claimed he was actually born in 1978, though his player registration stated it was 1984.

National failure
Similar stories also exist for both Jay-Jay Okocha and Taribo West who plied their trade in the Premier League for Bolton Wanderers and Derby County, respectively.

Throughout his career, Okocha was rumoured to be 10 years older than his official age. Following his departure from Derby in 2001, West allegedly told Partizan Belgrade that he was only 28, though given the state of his body the club had strong suspicions that he was 40.

It may not occur to us that our national failure is the sum total of all these little acts of dishonesty .I recall a Dutch-journalist friend of mine who I was driving along the Airport Road in 1998 and saw a fellow peeing on the road. He looked at the guy and said to me: “If that man cannot see anything wrong urinating on the roadside,he would do other 1000 things that are not right and would not see nothing wrong”.

We shall engage in this hollow rituals of celebrating our “victory” but we know in the inner recesses of our minds that is all a fluke because we didn’t do it right. Scoundrels posing as patriots would even abuse this writer for writing the truth. That majority is wrong should not desist the minority that is right from saying it as it is.

The truth must be told even if heavens fall: It is only righteousness that exalts a nation.
cc; lalasticlala ,ishilove
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/11/papa-eaglets-and-our-cheating-culture/

richidinho:

Okoro was nicknamed "Small Messi"
funny

Binb:
Ok mr right mentality, Nigeria has won the U-17 world cup a record five times but has never even reached trhe quarter final of the world cup is that also a coincidence?

marlockj:
Then your sister mst be 60yrs actual age

Dragonking:
[size=15pt]This is why we don't move forward...We are the same ones that always plot our downfall....The eediot that wrote this article has forgotten that of recent, before the tournament starts, all players will undergo an MRI scan first to determine their true age...So if the boys underwent the scan by FIFA and they were successful, why should this nincompoop come and write this trash Nigeria is it own enemy I swear. **spits**[/size]