Eagles' reward vs the labour of our heroes past

                           
Nigeria is a country where most people (if not everyone) thinks money is everything. Could it be as a result of poverty...or is there more to it?. Am yet to come to terms with the fact that after the Eagles' did in South Africa (making it count by bringing home the trophy), what the President could do was reward them with National Honours, millions of Naira, and plots of land in Abuja.

Please don't get me wrong, that's a lot to give out, but again like I said, money is not everything. Am of the opinion that the president could have done much more than what he did. For me, the most important thing should have been for policies to be put in place for this players. When I say policies, I mean policies that guarantee that these players continue to get the best of everything (health, finance etc) even after they must have quite playing football. They deserve that as heroes that they are. Up-to-date training facilities should be provided for them to better improve and maintain this new standard. If you don't agree with me, take out time and visit our so-called National stadium and see for yourselves the deplorable state of that place.



If you don't agree with me, let's go down memory lane a little. Let someone kindly let me know what happened to the likes of late Samson Oparaji (who died in active service), Rasheedi Yekini, Muda Lawal (1980), Uche Okafor to mention but a few.

Yes, you might want to say that the mentioned names are late, but have we taken time out to find out what exactly was done for them while they were alive and what became of their families after their demise? I assure you it's really heartbreaking at what you will discover happened to these past heroes of ours and until certain measures are taken at rewarding these guys and making sure that they get what they deserve for serving and doing the nation proud, am sorry to say, but things will never change. And I also bet you that this is also the reason (if not the major reason) why most athletes are reluctant to come home to serve their fathers' land.

We can learn from some of our foreign counterparts who ensure that the health and wealth of all their athletes is properly insured and catered for...even after they have retired from active service. This is an appeal to those in charge out there to kindly retrace their steps and make things right so that the labour of our heroes' past shall not continue to be in VAIN.