Stephen Keshi: Will he Bring Joy to Nigeria?

During the press conference after Nigeria’s surprise victory over Ivory Coast in the Cup of Nations quarter final in 2013, Mark Gleeson, a regular commentator on South African television and the doyen of African football journalism—and also a very tall man, at 6’9”—raised his hand to ask a question.

“Big man!” boomed Stephen Keshi, Nigeria’s manager. “I haven’t seen you in years. Where have you been?” 

“I’ve been covering the big boys,” Gleeson replied.

Keshi rocked back in his chair and roared with laughter. It was typical of him: he is a man who likes a joke and who laughs easily. I first met him at the Cup of Nations in Mali in 2002, when he was one of Shaibu Amodu’s assistants working with the national side: he was sprawled on a sun lounger by a swimming pool with journalists squatting around him. He always conveys a relaxed image, gives the impression of being laid-back and at ease with himself.  And yet, he is tough as they come, thick-skinned, and single-minded enough to navigate the difficult waters of Nigerian football.

There is surely no other national team that has such a large press corps, all of it vociferously pressing its own agenda. There are political pressures from inside the Nigerian Football Federation too, calling for certain players to be picked and others to be dropped, trying to influence tactics. As he put it, Keshi has had to  “close my eyes and close my ears and do what I think is right.”

I could see that Keshi is not a man to mess with from the second time I met him, in Cairo at the Cup of Nations in 2006. As a group of journalists waited in the stadium car park to interview players after the Democratic Republic of Congo’s 2-0 win over Togo, whom Keshi was managing, we became aware of a kerfuffle on the Togo team bus. As people began to raise their voices, Keshi grabbed the forward Emmanuel Adebayor by the throat, and a full-on fight was only avoided when other players pulled them apart. What the dispute was over was never fully explained, but the falling out with his star player eventually cost Keshi his job, even though he’d qualified Togo for the World Cup. When I interviewed him later in the tournament, the easy-going façade briefly slipped. “One day,” he said, “I will be coach of Nigeria and then they will know what a coach is.” He was half right.

Keshi became Nigeria coach in November 2011, replacing Samson Siasia. Nigeria was at a low ebb. Almost unthinkably they’d failed to qualify for the Cup of Nations in Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, something Keshi was able to use to his advantage. "It’s not an easy /job when it comes to football,” he said then. “You have millions of coaches telling you, mostly after the game, which line-up you should have played. I will try to do to my utmost best to bring back joy to Nigerian people.”

Keshi became Nigeria coach in November 2011, replacing Samson Siasia. Nigeria was at a low ebb. Almost unthinkably they’d failed to qualify for the Cup of Nations in Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, something Keshi was able to use to his advantage. "It’s not an easy job when it comes to football,” he said then. “You have millions of coaches telling you, mostly after the game, which line-up you should have played. I will try to do to my utmost best to bring back joy to Nigerian people.”

Yet the opposition persisted. The week before the tournament, it was said, there were moves to have Keshi dismissed. Even in the post-match press-conference after the final there were rumours that the Nigerian federation had made an approach to Herve Renard, who led Zambia to success in 2012.

Given what he’s achieved, you would think Keshi would be feted. On the contrary, the NFF seem intent on driving him out. In March, the NFF sent Keshi a letter–one that was widely leaked to the press–demanding to know why he had chosen to attend a media roundtable and lunch with Tomtom, who sponsor the national team, rather than going to a technical meeting in Abuja. A letter signed by Emmanuel Ikpeme, the NFF’s technical director, added the further complaint that, “you traveled out of Nigeria before February 13, 2014, the day President [Goodluck] Jonathan received the Africa Nations Championship [CHAN –the international tournament for players based in Africa] team, causing us huge embarrassment.”

The NFF then demanded a 35-man provisional squad for the World Cup; Keshi declined to provide it, saying it was too early and that he would wait until nearer the tournament before naming 25 players, with two to be cut before the final delivery of the squad to FIFA. “As a responsible organisation,” the NFF’s letter went on, “we have no other option than to issue you a query to explain how all these events unfolded." The term “responsible” there is being stretched to the very limit of its meaning. After all, this is a body that failed to pay Keshi for seven months last year; a settlement was eventually reached in December. Its excuse was poverty, and yet, at the same time as protesting it had no money to pay Keshi, the NFF was looking for a foreign coach to work alongside him. Can Keshi really be blamed if his patience has been eroded to the point that he just does his own thing?

That issue continues to rumble on. Last June, after Nigeria had gone out of the Confederations Cup at the group stage, the NFF president Aminu Maigari announced Keshi would no longer have sole responsibility for selecting the squad. Nigeria had performed relatively well, though it lost to Uruguay, the South American champions, and Spain, the world and European champions. So the statement smacked of looking for an excuse to meddle.

There is no doubt that Keshi can be awkward and belligerent, and that may have increased the antipathy between him and the NFF. But it’s probably the case that only somebody with Keshi’s bloody-mindedness could cope with pressure. And he deserves his head: it is, after all, he, more than any player, helped ended Nigeria’s drought.