The FIFA World Cup may be a priceless trophy, but Nigeria has committed a whopping $1.5m to pursue a semi-final target that will be extremely difficult to attain with just three months to the South Africa 2010 championship. Last week, the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) unveiled a foreign technical adviser for the Super Eagles. He is Swedish-born soccer strategist, Lars Lagerback. A dark horse among the pack, he swept past renowned tacticians who were even prepared to take less pay to clinch the plum job.

Lagerback has not coached any African team before, but his vast knowledge of Nigerian football and its key players scattered all over Europe was one of the pluses that won him the job. Now that a technical adviser who seems to have won the hearts of a majority of Nigerian soccer followers has been hired, the stage is finally set for the recreation of a squad that, hopefully, will do the country proud at the Mundial.

However, sifting through the press interviews granted by the new manager, it appears he may end up putting too many rods in the furnace. But he does not have the luxury of time to cope with that. The good thing is that the Swede will stay here to do his job, unlike his predecessor Berti Vogts who preferred to coach the Super Eagles from his home base in Germany. Nonetheless, for a coach who claimed to know so much about our star players abroad, we find his decision to junket all over Europe to meet some of them one-on-one rather curious. That planned tour will amount to a waste of precious time, energy and resources.

What is expected of the new technical adviser, as he himself has admitted, is to comb our domestic league with a view to assembling young and talented fresh legs that will form the nucleus of the new Super Eagles. This set of players will be available for a sustainable training regime. Football is a collective game and teamwork is the key to success. In spite of the array of star players that make up the Super Eagles, one of their greatest handicaps has been lack of cohesion.

The home-based players should be exposed to quality international friendlies as a way of building confidence in them. While that is ongoing, the technical adviser should monitor the performances of the foreign-based players through their managers so that those in good shape could be infused into the squad in the build-up to the championship.

Lagerback has convinced all and sundry that he is the best hand for the job. The NFF must give him all the necessary support to enable him prove that he is truly the messiah we have been waiting for.

Were this a civilised country, Gen. Abdullahi Sarki Mukhtar (retd) would have resigned his appointment as National Security Adviser (NSA) long before he was shown the door yesterday. Under his watch, Nigeria fast descended into a lawless state where human life was cheaper than a glass of ‘pure water’. It took the hacking to death of 200 to 600 innocent men, women and children by some marauders, in the early hours of this Sunday, for Acting President Goodluck Jonathan to get rid of Mukhtar.

The nation tolerated him for too long.  Apart from the massacre in the villages of Jos South LGA, Mukhtar's tenure as NSA was marked by blood, tears and sorrow. Politically motivated murders witnessed under Obasanjo did not cease. Armed robbers ruled the roost in almost all our cities, towns and villages. A crime once regarded as alien - kidnapping for ransom - became a national calamity. Tension arising from uncertainties in the presidency still rocks the land. It is on record that it was under Mukhtar that Nigeria got listed into America's black book as a security threat. That was after an attempt to blow up a US airliner over Detroit on December 25, 2009, by a 23-year-old Nigerian named Farouk Abdulmutallab.

The former NSA could not have been entirely responsible for all the security lapses, but, as the head of all the security agencies entrusted with the security of the nation, he should have accepted responsibility for their serial failures and resigned when he had no better idea. In any case, the nation has invested heavily in its security forces, and it will be interesting to probe into how Mukhtar spent the "security votes" at his disposal. Mukhtar's idea of national security, perhaps, included clamping down on media organisations.  Harassment of media houses and journalists, which many believed had been consigned to the dustbin of history after military rule, returned with the NSA's appointment in 2007. Channels Television, Africa Independent Television, several other broadcast stations and newspapers were hounded.

Our security forces stand condemned for the mayhems that have claimed more than 1, 000 lives in Jos alone this year. Our comment of September 3, 2007, on a nation was under siege by hoodlums, is still apt: "Billions of naira are appropriated each month for security because the primary responsibility of government is safeguarding life and property and then maintaining law and order. Every other obligation depends upon this most basic reason for a government's existence. For progress is impossible where there is no security of life and property." Why, despite all the security votes, have the security agencies never pre-empted and prevented attacks on defenceless civilians? There is evidence that, before the massacre of this Sunday, text messages had been going round. And when the hoodlums struck about 3 a.m., they were never challenged until they completed their havoc just before daybreak. Phone calls must have reached every part of the country then. Where were the State Security Service personnel that were ever ready to seal off the premises of media houses? Where were the policemen, civil defence corps and other agencies sustained by public funds?

Mukhtar's sack should be the beginning of a purge in the security outfits. If need be, all of them should be disbanded. They constitute a drain on the nation's resources.