End of Qatar 2022, birth of West Africa 2034

Photo by FRANCK FIFE / AFP

Tomorrow, the 2022 FIFA World Cup comes to a beautiful end.

I wish the better side on the night to win. Whilst we are waiting for that, I go back in time in order to catch up with the future (2034).

It is the year 2002.

I am with Stephen Akiga, the honourable minister of Sports of Nigeria.

We are at the headquarters of FIFA in Zurich, in the office of the President, Sepp Blatter, one of the most powerful men in the world.

There are two others present – Walter Gagg, the head of the Technical Department of FIFA, and Gboyega Okegbenro, the Senior Special Assistant to the Nigerian Minister.

Blatter welcomes us warmly and asks why we arranged to meet with him.

Akiga nods to me to speak on behalf of the Nigerian President who sent us to meet Blatter with a special message.

Mr. Blatter is all ears.

I tell him.

Nigeria is thinking of reviving and fulfilling the dreams of the founding political fathers of all African countries at Independence in the 1950s and 1960s, a united, peaceful and prosperous continent.

I completely avoid telling him what he must already know, of an Africa that, despite all its natural and mineral resources, remains poor and under developed.

Instead, I paint a completely different picture.

I tell him of a new socio-cultural, economic and political architecture; of a secure and safe borderless West African region with its huge 400-million consumer-base enabling flourishing trade, commerce and business and leisure, in a domesticated model of the European Union, with a common currency, a super-highway running across the sub-continent from the West to the East hugging the beautiful Atlantic coastline from Dakar to Doula.

I tell him about a new monorail system running parallel to the superhighway