What Nigeria's run in Brazil means to the people back home

"It was just like an ordinary day. Happy faces and friendly warmth that makes you feel happy to be back home. We had gone to the railway market to get something. I think it was 15 minutes later when we heard the loud blast from the place. And suddenly, people were just running.”

- Nigerian midfielder Ogenyi Onazi, last month, after narrowly avoiding bombings at a bus terminal and a market in Jos, which killed at least 118 people.

A bomb blast at a shopping complex in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, killed at least 21 people on Wednesday. Banex plaza was full of shoppers at the time of the bombing. Last week a bomb blast in the northern city of Damaturu targeted a World Cup viewing party, killing 14 and injuring 26.

The Nigerian government’s ongoing war with Boko Haram, an Islamist extremist group, is ravaging the country. However, the abduction of girls in the North and bombings around the country have went from leading international news reports to filler in the middle, akin to the so-called “dead” years of the War in Iraq.

We know terrible things are happening by the day, but our capacity to follow and understand is strained by our own lives, and news in our own countries.

That obviously isn’t the case for the Super Eagles in Brazil. This is their country. Their people.

In a country where the sport means so much — where public viewings for soccer games were a long-standing tradition — Nigerians are looking toward Brazil for respite from the violence that is tearing their country apart.

“The only way we can console or condole these people who lost their lives or who were injured is to just do one thing: go ahead and beat Bosnia and qualify for the next round of the World Cup,” team coordinator Emmanuel Attah told the AP.

They did just that, and waged a valiant fight against Argentina in their final game of the group stage to reach the round of 16 at the World Cup for the first time since 1998. They’ll play France at Estádio Nacional de Brasilia next Monday.

Nonetheless, we continue to hear the same question during this tournament: What’s wrong with African football?

That’s the first issue: There isn’t a blanket problem that pertains to an entire continent. Each country is dealing with a unique situation. And these situations aren’t geographically locked in to Africa: Asian countries performed very poorly in Brazil. Italy, England and Spain — the European powers — failed to meet their expectations.

The problem with saying that African football is struggling is that it implies it is a single country, not a continent with separate needs and issues.

Cameroon players are fighting each other on the pitch. Ghana’s FA is implicated in a match-fixing scandal and an appearance fee dispute. Kevin-Prince Boateng and Sulley Muntari were kicked off the team for separate incidents relating to fighting. Cote D’Ivoire failed to reach the knockout stage yet again.

For Nigeria, this tournament is no longer about advancing, or simply beating France. It’s about trying to find something to soothe the turmoil that has stricken one of Africa’s shining lights.

“How much of a victory is football going to give for those lives?'' asked head coach Stephen Keshi following Wednesday’s attacks. The question puts a lot into perspective. A win in Brazil won’t resurrect the dead, heal the wounded or bring criminals to justice.

But it’s not without value, either.

Kenneth Okechu-Kwu Onfemere, a Super Eagles supporter interviewed by the AP, offered one way the team can help those left behind.

''Football can bring love, happiness and unity. It can make us forget our problems.”

The idea that “it’s just a game” is hammered into us as kids. We have such a narrow perspective on the world at a young age, that it’s something worth remembering. That changes as we get older and our world gets bigger.

But that larger worldview can’t be applied to Nigeria, at least not now. It’s just a game, yes. But for Nigerians, desperate for something positive during this time of constant strife, it’s a hope. It’s their only hope on the horizon. And it’s a hope that has the potential to lift people up who have spent too much time being dragged down.