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orwelliANDYstopia @andyRoidO
, 18 tweets, 7 min read Read on Twitter
Before you watch today's Super Eagles match against Iceland, read my article and thread about how Iceland's current giant-killing prowess is the product of 20 years of planning and investment by their FA and government. It's not about blaming our players.

andyobuoforibo.com/a-song-of-ice-…
In the mid 90s, when we were shocking the Football World (marginally), Iceland's FA (KSI) decided they did not want to be football nobodies anymore, and devised plans to improve their "national team production pipeline".

andyobuoforibo.com/a-song-of-ice-…
The KSI and Iceland's Government invested money and organizational effort into improving grassroots football. As @SEzekwesili & I previously discussed in our @HNW_BD podcast, Nigeria made no similar investment in the last 20 years.

Iceland invested in coaches. They set up a UEFA training centre in Reykjavic that meant Icelanders no longer needed to travel to continental Europe to get UEFA coaching licenses. Today Iceland has 1 UEFA-badged coach for every 500 citizens.

andyobuoforibo.com/a-song-of-ice-…
Iceland has so many UEFA licensed coaches, they can afford to make a UEFA badge a REQUIREMENT for under-8s!
When I was 10 in Naija, my "coach" was an SS2 boy who advised me on the virtues of not missing the leg if I missed the ball.
This expert coaching for kids is not free. €300 per year. Municipal councils in Iceland give every kid a voucher to pay for after-school programs of their choice. So Icelandic govt is rich enough (and its population small enough) to subsidize UEFA-grade coaching for kids.
Iceland is, but surprise, shockingly wintry. It is so White Walkerlike that there isn't enough good weather during the year to play enough football to groom good players. So KSI built "Football Halls": big domes with football fields and facilities in them.
andyobuoforibo.com/a-song-of-ice-…
During the banking boom of early 2000s, Iceland made money. It invested a chunk of this in sport infrastructure like the Football Halls. How much from Nigeria's multiple oil windfalls has ever been put into sport? But "Super Eagles disgraced us".

A whole football culture has sprang up in small towns around their football halls. All age groups from under-8s to semi-pros use the halls. There is access to idols, sharing of know-how, and a general LEGITIMACY is lent to football.

But this convergence at the Football Halls also allows KSI to start tracking promising talent from a frighteningly young age.

andyobuoforibo.com/a-song-of-ice-…
Iceland has 1 UEFA coach for every 500 people.
It has 1 footballer for every 14 people.
Iceland therefore has roughly 1 UEFA coach for every 36 footballers (quick maths). Most of those are at youth level. That is why they are quality and we are not.

andyobuoforibo.com/a-song-of-ice-…
We do not have the same weather and skill problems as Iceland. In the early 90s, we still had a decent youth football system. Imagine if we had invested proportionally what Iceland had in the last 20 years.

Nigeria let youth grassroots football die. While Icelandic pre-teens are getting UEFA-badge coaching & playing year-round, kids in Lagos are playing 6 matches in Principals Cup, and calling it a season. That's not how ballers are built. But "blame Eagles"

Youth football is essential for developing a "national playing style". By the time an 18 year old breaks national team, he should have a decade of playing the national team style under his belt. Football Halls do that in Iceland. Naija...?

andyobuoforibo.com/a-song-of-ice-…
Icelanders play a defence-heavy, disciplined game, designed to tire out and frustrate more individualistic teams until there is a breakdown they can exploit. They have been learning this style from childhood since the 2000s.

andyobuoforibo.com/a-song-of-ice-…
The first football halls opened in 2000. The men playing Nigeria today are products of that system. Where were Super Eagles of today playing ball as pre-teens?

andyobuoforibo.com/a-song-of-ice-…
JJ Okocha once said that what the average English footballer learns as a teen, the average African learns in his late 20s when he comes to Europe. This is the gospel truth. Here endeth the sermon. Please check out the article.

andyobuoforibo.com/a-song-of-ice-…
Also check out our #HowNigeriaWorks podcast on the Super Eagles. Thanks.
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While this was a truly beautiful thread, I must correct the inaccuracies about the life of great King Jaja of Opobo with a short thread of my own.
First, all respect to the people of Ibani and Opobo, and permit me to speak on the history of your Chief and King (respectively) Jaja, as an amateur historian, and a successor of his in the Ijaw institution of War Canoe House Chieftaincy.
Jaja was not born Ijaw. He was not born Efik or Ibibio or Isoko, or any other a Niger Delta nationality. He was born Igbo, in a village in Amaigbo.
Read 55 tweets
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That's because a sizeable number of Nigerian women have been taught from childhood that the "power" of running their household and the "indispensability" of keeping things working for a domestically clueless husband are the only power and importance they should aspire to.
Give those same women a do-over, and teach them from childhood that no ambition of theirs will be frowned upon socially, or seen as less natural to their gender than domestic divinity, and watch many if not most of them find validation in other dreams/goals/lives.
In the same way, many if not most men, if they were to relive their lives, this time NOT trained from boyhood to have a sense of worth tied to being breadwinners and commanding the deferrence of spouses and peers, would probably fix different goals for life.
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This is my annual Andypendence Day Thread.

Fellow Nigerians,

We were condemned before we were even born, by a nation built to fail by plundering British Lords, and kept a failure by plundering Nigerian generals and politicians.

But there is hope.

#NigeriaAt58
The Federal Republic of Nigeria does not exist for the benefit of the average Nigerian. The average Nigerian isn't free. She is a slave to a bad economy, worse education, and failure. These are the natural results of a system DESIGNED to keep a small elite in power.
#NigeriaAt58
Independence is not the end goal.
It is a state that is supposed to make the end goal more likely.
The end goal is a better life for ourselves and our children. The end goal is a national life of which we can be proud. #NigeriaAt58
Read 16 tweets

Related threads

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#THREAD

Yesterday's indictment is a major signal that we're nearing the end of the #TrumpRussia prologue.

I interviewed @Mimirocah1 about the story which she said indicates that "prosecutors are putting the pieces together."

I agree.

Here's my $0.02.

washingtonpress.com/2019/01/08/a-m…
Why is Natalia Veselnitskaya's link to the Kremlin so important?

1 - SDNY provides Mueller with apolitical evidence sent from the target that predates all investigations.
2 - Proves Don Jr. met a Kremlin Agent
3 - Burns the Russian prosecution against @Billbrowder

2/
Natalia Veselnitskaya had been working on the Prevezon case for years, but in 2014 she involved herself drafting of the official response to the DoJ's invocation of a treaty for legal assistance.

She sent the evidence that she worked with the Kremlin to SDNY prosecutors.

3/
Read 15 tweets
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Debts/Liabilities inherited by Buhari Admin in 2015:

Pension/Salary Arrears: N740bn

Oil Subsidy Debt: N350bn

Paris Club Overdeductions: $5.4bn

JV CashCall Arrears: $6.8bn

Contractor Debt/EEG Debt: N1.9 Trn

Refunds to States for Roads: N488bn

Total: 7 TRILLION Naira
#Thread
You can’t understand where we are today without understanding where we’re coming from. At least 7 TRILLION Naira in unpaid debts/liabilities, accumulated between 1999-2015, inherited by Buhari Administration.

All now being paid/settled. Even amidst relatively-low oil prices.
Look at Salaries/Pensions arrears. Examples abound: Nigerian Airways staff laid off 2003/4,unpaid until 2018. Delta Steel Co, Ex-Biafra Police Officers (pardoned since 2000)

See this thread from earlier this year by former Finance Minister @HMKemiAdeosun:
Read 10 tweets
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#DontVote4BJP

#Thread

56 reasons why not vote for BJP in 2019.

1. Increased racism.
The different religions have gone far from being heard before
2/
 2. Petrol and diesel prices fall in the global market and record highs in the country. It is clear that the people's welfare is not the goal of Modi goverment. The price for this Incresed today, during it was typing.

3. Railway freight cargo increased by 10%
3/
4. LPG cylinder cost crossing 800 and now it has more than doubled in 2014

5. Indian rupee depreciated by a record high. The most depreciated currency is Indian rupee amoung Asian countries...
Read 40 tweets
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I JUST WANT TO FEEL SOMETHING | I recently started drinking again after a long time of not drinking. #Thread #Nigeria #Unhappiness
Yesterday, as I considered my glass of single malt whiskey, I remembered a friend who wrote about sleeping with random women. After I read his article, I asked why he did it, since he didn't seem like the "promiscuous" type. He said he just wanted to feel something.
"Life is hard in Nigeria", he said. "I go to work every day and am stuck in traffic for 3 hours. I don't really connect with the people around me, so there's no one to ask how my day went. Each day is the same. I needed to feel something."
Read 9 tweets
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1) This is my #Qanon thread for June 30th, 2018.

Q posts can be found here: qanon.pub

My theme: "Conspiracy No More"
2) An anon posted a link to an article about #Qanon noting that he detected a hefty amount of BS in the story.

The author of the article is Brock Dorsey.
The article, like most written about Q, mentions Jerome Corsi.
3) Here's a link to the article.
It's worth reading.
#Qanon
amerika.org/politics/qanon…
Read 82 tweets
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Dr. Oby Ezekwesili on NIGERIA EDUCATION STRUCTURAL DYSFUNCTIONALLITY:

It was in October 2013, on @channelstv where Dr. @obyezeks shared some thoughts on our Education System.

Those words are as relevant today as they were then, an evidence of motion without progress.
#Thread.
1. Education is a System.

2. A System works organically. If you don't understand what creates a dysfunction to a System, you will be addressing the symptoms instead of the fundamentals.
3. Education falls within the Concurrent List of our Constitution. That is, the Federal, State, and Local Governments have the Constitutional empowerment to embark on programmes.
Read 11 tweets

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