Speakers at the Nigeria Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) believe that a West Africa hosted FIFA World Cup is an idea whose time has come. The idea of the sub-regional World Cup was first canvassed in 2002 after the Japan/Korea edition of the Copa du Mundo, but as feasible as it sounded, people, who didn’t see the benefits inherent in it, shot it down.
Yesterday at the NIIA, speakers at one of the institute’s ‘The Conversation of Sport Diplomacy’ series agreed that hosting the most popular global sporting event would be of immense benefit to the economic and structural development of the West Africa region.
Speaking on the project, former international football captain, Olusegun Odegbami, said West Africa would have been the first region to host a multi-nation World Cup if Nigerians knew the inherent benefits when the idea was muted in 2002.
According to Odegbami, “After the 2002 World Cup, A Nigerian delegation went to Zurich to meet with the then FIFA President, Sepp Blatter, on West Africa’s interest in hosting the competition.
“We explained to Blatter how a West Africa World Cup would help us achieve African unity and development. We wanted to use the World Cup to free ourselves from five centuries of enslavement.
“Blatter assured us that we would win the bid if our government made the proposal to FIFA. However, when we came back from Zurich, our media shot down the idea and President Olusegun Obasanjo was forced to back down.
“Twenty years on, two of the world’s biggest economies, America and Canada, are teaming up with Mexico to host the event in 2026.
“We pioneered the idea of multi-nation hosting of the World Cup 20 years ago. The idea is that the black race must come together because if we fail to unite, we are doomed as a race.”
Odegbami said the prelude to a West Africa World cup is the hosting of Africa’s Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC) as a multinational festival that will bring Africans in the Diaspora back to the mother continent.
“Part of the Festac we envision is the opening up of the slave routes and detention centres so that our brothers from the Americas will come to see first hand their ancestors odysseys during the slave trade era.
“Regional Festac will also take people to different areas of the continent where they learn first hand the peoples cultures and mores,” he said.
In his paper entitled, ‘Securing a borderless West Africa- one visa, one currency for all in 2034,’ Dr. Ademola Adewusi, who represented Dr. Willie Eselebor, said a West Africa World Cup would aid the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) regional integration efforts, especially its bid to create a free trade zone.
He said West Africa has the resources to host the World Cup if the governments buy the idea, adding that the countries have enough time to decide how to go about it.
“The reason governments don’t do things immediately is because they give themselves time to look at the time properly. When we are talking about roads, power, stadia, hospitals and all the other things associated with hosting a competition of that magnitude.
“When you set a target to it and say ‘we are hosting an event,’ governments tend to work towards that time. They will work towards because they don’t want to be disgraced.
“You see that Nigeria has hoisted the U-17 and U-20 World Cup. I remember when Sepp Blatter came to Nigeria to check the state of our U-17 World Cup facilities; he was worried that the infrastructure was not ready. But two months later, when he came back, he branded Nigerians as magicians. This was because the government of Nigeria put the resources together to make the hosting possible.
“This is 2022 and we want to host the World Cup in 2034, we have 12 years to put all the facilities in place and all the things we have to host the competitions.”
On the different cultures, languages and currencies of the countries of West Africa, Adewusi said the power of sport is massive. “When it comes to sports, you see the entire world cooperate. You can see the effect of the ongoing World Cup on Nigerians. When matches are going on, the roads are usually free. The World Cup is holding in far away Qatar, but it is reverberating all over the world.
“Football unites people more than the things that divide them. In West Africa, our cultures are unique, but we also share a lot of affinity because we are brothers and sisters. You see the jollof battle Nigeria and Ghana has been a lovely theme in their football battles.
“FIFA experimented with it in Japan/Korea and America, Mexico and Canada will host it in 2026 and we think that the fact that we are going to share the burden makes it more feasible. All the bids for the 2030 World Cup are regional.
“Nigeria does not have to build 10 new stadiums now, we already have some. Benin Republic, Togo and Ghana will only have to develop two stadiums each.
“That will limit the amount of resources we need to put into the project. And then we can set up a multinational force that will enable us to do it successfully.”(The Guardian)
