Which kain country be this sef?" (The Football Fever))

I bet you reading this is somewhat bemused on the title of this work as the word "kain" is not in the English dictionary. For those of you not of African origin, especially Non Nigerians, the word "kain" is used in place of type or kind of.

The caption phrase was captured from a Nigerian whom had gone to watch the AFCON 2013 match between Nigeria and Burkina Faso and with the expectations high, the Super Eagles were expected to breeze through their opponents. This it seemed was going to be the case when Emmanuel Emenike scored a beautiful goal on the 23rd minute from a flick on setup. 

But, Burkina Faso had some plans, to strike in the dying minute, into added time, leveling the match on 90 + 4 minutes and of course being nightmares of those whom had given the match to the Super Eagles.

The scores, performance and final outcome of the match is not what moved me, but as I earlier mentioned, the words of a compatriot whom I overhead from a distance while heading home from work sometime around  9pm on Monday, 21 Jan., 2013.

His words from a distance; "which kain country be this sef, those Eagles no even sabi anything"..

Hearing these got me so interested, then I walked up and asked, "bros, how you see the match?"

Then he continues, ""that match na rubbish, which kain country be this sef, football, they no fit play, government no dey do them work, light no dey, at least for night but mosquito dey work scatter our body. Ooohhhhhhhh, this kain match I suppose dey watch for my house but I dey comot, infact everything just bad..."

He concludes; "Me, I don tell my people say for as long as our government dey do as them like, Nigeria go dey play rubbish for international sports competitions, abi bros, you no see wetin we play, even the Olympics sef"

I couldn't help but to laugh, however, this shows the correlation between the beautiful game or even sports that is widely followed in a country and the effect of how a nation is governed in its entirety. In a situation where the country is not well governed and sports is on a positive with regards to performance, the activities of government will not be as depressing to the nation as a whole compared to when both sectors are derailed.

Indeed, sports is more passionately widely followed than politics, which further goes to add that if the politicians are not doing their work and sports is, the pain of the people will be eased away but in a situation, like it seems to be the case, when sports is complementing the political environment, with regards to a shoddy performance, then  there will be widespread anger, complains and hatred for the government.

These said, the squared game played about 2 hours ago is not the final game of the tourney for the Super Eagles, as there is hope for them to do what the government have not widely done, putting a lingering smile on the faces of lovers of the beautiful game in Nigeria, which makes up well over 60 percent of her population.