Lagos — The national embarrassment brought upon the nation by the dismal performance of its senior soccer team, the Super Eagles, at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa is no doubt symptomatic of the general societal decay.

In the case of the disgraceful World Cup outing, it traceable to lack of adequate preparation on the part of both the players and their coach, Lars Lagerback, who was hired only three weeks to the World Cup. Contributory also was the unnecessary meddlesomeness of the Ministry of Sports in the affairs of the Nigerian Football Federation, NFF. Apart from the country's decrepit infrastructure, other underlying problems include endemic corruption among sports administrators and lack of sustainable development of football from the youth level, comparable to that of Germany, Mexico, Ghana or the eventual winner, Spain.

Though President Goodluck Jonathan was compelled, shortly after the World Cup tournament, to reverse the government's earlier decision to ban the national teams from participating in FIFA-organised competitions for two years, owing to pressure from concerned stakeholders, we cannot run away from the urgent need to put our football house in order. The recurring failure of the Super Eagles to live up to the expectation of millions of soccer-loving Nigerians calls for a roadmap to take the country out of the woods.

First is the imperative to cleanse the Augean stable. The time for professional footballers to come in and drive a paradigm shift towards instilling badly needed discipline in the national teams is now. A holistic appraisal of the critical challenges militating against excellent performance of the coaches and players should be urgently carried out. What magic wand did Clemens Westerhof employ to evolve a national senior team that became a reference point in the African continent back in 1994? We should learn from that, as preparations for the next World Cup coming up in Brazil in 2014 must now begin, without delay. We should not wait till the eleventh hour to start deploying crisis managers to deal with avoidable disasters created by deep-rooted leadership and administrative lapses.

There is no denying the fact that the time has come to give preference to Nigerians with the requisite technical expertise and administrative experience, in choosing a coach for the Super Eagles, as George Weah has rightly admonished. And whoever emerges as the coach must be given a free hand to operate. The NFF should, after thorough consideration, set realistic targets to be attained, instead of relying on the Sports Ministry's manipulative tactics. For years the nation failed to plan its football administration, and ended up harvesting a series of image-damaging failures at international competitions. Now, we must do our homework.

It is needful that Nigeria should undertake an honest comparative analysis with South Africa, the first African country to host the Mundial. Would Nigerians, for instance, have been able to utilize $6.5 billion, as South Africa did, to build five brand new stadia and renovate five others, all to world class standard, without allegations of underhand practices? Could we have provided first class, state-of-the-art infrastructural facilities including airports, hotels, roads and communication networks when allegations that between $10 billion and $16 billion was spent on generating darkness continue to assail the public's ears? Or when a tidy sum of $236,000 literally grew wings and vanished out of the NFF glasshouse without a trace, till date? Can we forget so soon the Hampshire Hotel scandal preparatory to the World Cup? Corruption no doubt is the prime enemy of Nigeria's soccer development, and the sooner this administration tackles it with the promised renewed vigour the better. It is the bitter pill the nation must swallow now in order to record a better outing in subsequent tournaments.

Every effort must therefore be made to ensure that only persons of sterling character and outstanding competence find their way into the NFF's executive offices. We need business-minded professionals who will leverage their entrepreneurial talents and passion to take Nigerian football to a new exciting level. The NFF should in turn place itself in a position to offer the new coach all the technical and moral backing he needs. The coach, for his part, has the task of providing a level playing field for all invited players (foreign-based and home-based) to vie for shirts, based on merit. Any coach who cannot rise above the temptation to take bribes from any of the players in exchange for a place in the team is unworthy of his position.

Nigeria is currently in great need of devoted, patriotic and highly skilled players, who are hungry for goals. Besides, an effective mechanism has to be in place to identify fresh talents through the several football academies and corporate- sponsored competitions at youth level. These should be consciously groomed to graduate, over time, into the senior team and thus relieve the present tired legs in the Super Eagles. Emphasis should likewise be shifted from feeding the local mania for the English, Spanish and Italian Premier Leagues to aggressively developing the local leagues in a way that will ultimately command the world's attention. That is by no means an unattainable goal, and that way, our national teams will stand a good chance to be world-beaters someday.