The Super Eagles rule in South Africa. How they must have been delighted out in Lagos and Abuja!
After all, for years the Nigerians have been telling us how lucky we were to have won the 1996 Africa Cup of Nations. Our West African brothers have been repeatedly saying there was no way Bafana Bafana would have been crowned African champions had their national team been around to defend their title.
And in 2013 their squad backed them up with success on the field.
Champions in 1994, Stephen Keshi and Co could not come to defend their crown after their government decided against their making the trip to South Africa where “their safety cannot be guaranteed”.
Nelson Mandela’s government had voiced their disapproval of the killing of Nigerian human rights activist Ken Saro Wiwa by Sani Abacha’s regime and that soured relations between the two countries.
Nigeria were banned from the 1998 Afcon by CAF for shunning South Africa 1996. And so it was that when they arrived for the 2013 event – which South Africa hosted in place of original hosts Libya, a country in a state of turmoil – they were driven to prove a point.
And they did so in style, Keshi leading his men to the title courtesy of a 1-0 win over the Stallions of Burkina Faso. En route to the title, the Super Eagles had beaten the Ivory Coast in the quarter-finals and hammered Mali 4-1 in the semis.
While the excitement around the tournament was nothing like what we experienced in 1996, Afcon 2013 pulled in huge crowds and was actually pretty entertaining, producing 58 goals.
I only went to the opening match – Bafana Bafana v Cape Verde at the FNB Stadium and, while the show on the pitch was a disappointment, it was fun being in the stands and not in the press box for a change.
There was the usual singing and dancing as well as the Mexican wave. Though the seats were numbered, people sat anywhere they liked. It was for this reason that my wife and I had to play the role of mediators between four guys warring over two seats. The guys who had arrived earlier did not budge despite the seats not being theirs and we advised the owners to find somewhere else to avoid what was slowly edging closer to a full-blown fight.
The fights on the pitch were fascinating and the one name that stood out throughout the tournament was that of Jonathan Pitroipa of Burkina Faso.
The 2013 Player of the Tournament will once again be leading the Stallions’ attack in Gabon this year.
Pitroipa couldn’t, however, deliver the title for his country as the Nigerian defence shut him out while Sunday Mba delivered the goal that saw Keshi win the title as coach having captured it as captain back in 1994.
Two years later, Africa’s top countries converged on Equatorial Guinea. Like South Africa in the previous tournament, they too, got to host the event as a replacement after Morocco unsuccessfully asked for a postponement of the event due to the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa.
We all remember how excited we were at Bafana Bafana qualifying ahead of Nigeria and how Shakes Mashaba became a hero.
But at the tournament things just didn’t go well as Bra Shakes did the unthinkable by switching goalkeepers in all his matches. The results were disastrous, Bafana suffering a 3-1 defeat to Algeria in the opening match, holding Senegal 1-1 and then going down 2-1 to Ghana and finishing bottom of the table.
Now they are not in Gabon and we will once again have to choose other teams to support.