‘CAF Awards: A reminder of Nigeria’s possibilities’

Nigeria’s winners and officials at the CAF Awards in Marrakech, Morocco.

Nigeria has been gripped by a euphoria by the success of its footballers at last week’s African Footballer of the Year Awards held in Marrakech, Morocco. At the Awards gala held on Monday, Nigeria’s Victor Osimhen and Asisat Oshoala were named Africa’s Footballers of the Year (men and women respectively), with Chiamaka Nnadozie emerging as the Goalkeeper of the Year (women), while Super Falcons became the Best Women’s National Team of the Year. Since the ceremony, many Nigerians have been celebrating the country’s return to a position it last occupied in 1999.
But CHRISTIAN OKPARA writes that the victory in Morocco will amount to nothing if stakeholders did not do the things that would ensure that the country produces more Osimhens, Oshoalas and the Nnadozies of the next generation.

Suddenly, Nigerians have become optimistic again. A people that were left despondent by their national team’s failure to qualify for the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup and the hit and miss pattern the Super Eagles have adopted in the last two years are now dreaming of greatness because four of their own, Victor Osimhen, Asisat Oshoala, Chiamaka Nnadozie and the women national team, the Super Falcons, were on Monday in Marrakech, Morocco, declared the best among Africa’s football stars for the year 2022/23.

In a country where many do not know where their next meal will come from, football, the most unifying factor in the Nigerian milieu, has once more come to embody the hope the people so desire at this critical period of the country’s political development.

The euphoria of the four crowns their compatriots won in Morocco has emboldened many football fans to start thinking that