By Isaac Massaquoi
The world is gradually breathing a sigh of relief once again as Fabrice Muamba takes his first step in a London hospital. He is the Congolese-born and Bolton Wanderers footballer who clinically died for 78 minutes and came back to life with the help of remarkable medical science undertaken by some of the best brains in the business.
Thanks to 24-hour television and the global appeal of the English Premier League, the incident in north London soon became a talking point across the world. I was on my home from a Sierra Leone Premier League match when I heard the news on BBC radio.
The public show of support from all over the world was overwhelming and unfettered. A 21-year-old British student Liam Stacey who twitted racist comments about Fabrice under the influence of alcohol is serving a 56-day jail term after he was reported to police by colleagues on the social network. At his trial, the Judge told him: "I have no choice but to impose an immediate custodial sentence to reflect the public outrage at what you have done...you committed this offence while you were drunk and it is clear you immediately regretted it. But you must learn how to handle your alcohol better." It gives you the sense of how the world expected people to treat this matter.
This incident reminds me of one of my favourite Nigerian footballers of all time, Samuel Okwaraji. The 24 year – old from Imo state collapsed ten minutes from the end of a World Cup Qualifier against Angola in Surulere Lagos on 12 August 1989 and died from congestive heart failure. I also remember Marc Vivien Foe - the 28-year-old Cameroonian who fell to the ground unchallenged in the 72nd minute of a Confederations Cup semi-final against Colombia in Lyon, France in June 2003. Like Fabrice, he was treated on the pitch before being stretchered off to receive further treatment, including mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and extra oxygen. He died in hospital.
I have brought these examples because like the rest of the football-loving world I was terribly shocked by what happened in north London and believe me I prayed fervently that Fabrice, who means so much to his family and the young people of Africa pulls through and returns to work at the Reebok Stadium.
Inevitably however, the question should be asked: what if we had our own Fabrice Muamba incident at the National Stadium in Freetown. I don’t mind being accused of thinking negatively because these days we are being harassed, bullied and intimidated to think in one direction because those pulling the strings behind the scenes have failed to come to terms with the fact that their efforts are like the delusion of one hundred years of apartheid. It will not work. Holding contrary views on anything under the sun is an inescapable part of the human condition. Let’s get on with it.
I ask the question again, what if we had our own Fabrice Muamba incident at the National Stadium. I have to say that we would be unable to cope and the player will have to rely on the mercy of God. I am a great lover of football and I make it a habit of watching every Premier League match in Freetown and in the regions if I happen to be in the right place. I served on the Premier League Board for two seasons, so I have first-hand experience of what it means to organise Sierra Leonean Football.
Let’s get a few issues out of the way from the outset. Investment in the game by corporate Sierra Leone is absolutely zero; match attendance has fallen to disgraceful levels, the clubs are therefore extremely poor, players have no formal contracts and undergo no medical checks before they take to the field and I have seen no team in the Premier League with a qualified medical staff working alongside their managers.
Whenever there is an injury on the field, all one sees is the team’s welfare officer with water and Deep Heat spray in hand running onto the pitch to attend to the player. Are we really serious?
Let nobody tell me this is Sierra Leone. Our boys and those in Europe play under the same rules. We can argue about the intensity of the game itself in the English Premier League for example, compared to the Sierra Leone Premier League but we should make no excuses about maintaining minimum standards at all playing venues throughout Sierra Leone.
The national stadium itself has no first-aid unit within the facility, yet the management rents the facility to nursery schools and religious groups to do athletics and hold religious prayer meetings. Even the Red Cross is normally nowhere to be seen – at least they can help provide first aid in case of an emergency.
The clubs themselves are not well organised. During my time on the Premier League Board, I came face-to-face with the stark realities. Under the leadership of Alpha Timbo we negotiated for weeks with mobile phone companies to get them to sponsor the league. It was not easy to get anybody to come forward and help as the whole football project, badly led by Nahim Khadi was and remains totally unattractive to sponsors. Whatever money came in from the mobile phone companies of Comium and Africell went into paying referees and other match officials and giving seed money to the clubs.
I accompanied Alpha Timbo, when he was Chairman of the Premier League Board, on a visit to clubs in the eastern and southern regions. Some of the clubs had no offices, bank accounts or official telephone numbers. In one place we called the club secretary to arrange a meeting. The person who picked up the phone promised to pass the message on. She never did. We had to go to the training ground to meet the secretary. Some clubs officials came to the secretariat to ask that seed monies be paid into their personal bank accounts because the clubs had no bank accounts or such clubs are being run from their pockets.
People have been complaining and very loudly so, about the state of the nation’s most popular sport for a long time. The facts on the ground today are that the more people complain, the more things either remain the same or deteriorate. How can we explain the fact that FA president Nahim Khadi is running the association from London for the past several years? This is just not right.
Paul Kamara, minister of sports, then a journalist, wrote a lot of articles about the corruption and disorganisation affecting football administration. He was puritanical and a little personal in his attacks so that when it became clear to him that society couldn’t care less, he drilled deeper and deeper and ended up in prison as a result of a case brought against him by Tolla Thompson who presided over an FA that failed to put players on the field.
Several years on, people have come to realize that Paul had good points to make but that he was probably overtaken by emotion. Now Paul is the minister in charge and the nation has witnessed once again his almost uncontrollable desire to speedily change football administration. I share the same zeal but I think he should hasten slowly because the turning point will come at the SLFA elective congress not too long from now.
All of these problems manifest themselves in things that appear as simple as poor refereeing, complete lack of basic medical facilities at the national stadium and clubs signing players without conducting medical examination, clubs without medical staff and unbelievable risk-taking throughout the Premier League program.
For now, we can only hope and pray that a Fabrice Muamba incident doesn’t happen again any time soon anywhere in the world – but especially so at our stadium any time soon.
