Don’t shift your fault on Andre Onana, blame the Obdurate “messiah” and his clique – Elie Smith

Pride comes before the fall of a man, they say. Nevertheless, what happened to the insipid but occasionally flamboyant Lions was visible from the start, but like typical Cameroonians, we refused to see or acknowledge the reality.

The situation of the Indomitable Lions is like Cameroon and the handling of our multiple crises, star of which is the Anglophone crisis. We first start by arresting, intimidating or refusing to acknowledge it, and then, out of pride, we say, it is over. Over? I pray God we don’t become Somalia.

No! That was not what I wanted to write about. I wanted to write about this Reverend father this morning, who said amongst many things that, the absence of genuine love amongst us has created the following problems: our insecurities, narcissism and foolish pride.

A proud person doesn’t know how to say, I am sorry, I was wrong and also thinks he or she is correct and likes to be in a state of constantly making remonstrance at others, without thinking about the harm that he or she causes. Our Indomitable Lions, the only thing left for Cameroonians to identify with or to be proud of, in a country that is gradually becoming Zaire, is the image of the country.

The Indomitable Lions were lost yesterday in the beautiful city of Abidjan. A city that has good roads and still has a functioning urban transport system. Ours is dead. There is a comatose one, in Douala, with buses that break down willy-nilly.

Let me focus on OUR INDOMITABLE Lions. Their individual and collective performances yesterday was average despite all the noises made around them, before the match against the Super Eagles.

They brought in Abubakar Vincent, but despite his huffing and puffing, for 15 or 20 minutes, he did nothing. It is even shocking that for 100 minutes of an exciting football game, Cameroonian players could shoot at the Nigerian goal. It means that the Nigerian goalkeeper cannot be rated properly or his defenders erected a Jericho-like wall against him that our feeble and ineffective attackers couldn’t break. The latter was more glaring again when the substitute Nigerian goalkeeper, came in, he spent 20 minutes unruffled. It was as if he came on for a training session or was on a picnic. We were appalling.

As I know you as specialists in the apportionment of blame on others, don’t accuse Andre Onana. Accuse those who think tribalism is a panacea for success. However, why blame them, when someone people in high places extol tribalism?