In 1989, in a quarter-final match of the 1989 Under-20 World Cup, in the second half, Nigeria was being led four goals to nothing by the defunct Soviet Union. Nigeria went on to equalize, stretched the match into extra time, and into a penalty shootout. In what was dubbed the “Miracle of Daman,” Nigeria won the match.

In 1996, at the Atlanta Olympic Games, a similar feat was reenacted. Nigeria was being led three goals to one in the second half by mighty Brazil. Nigeria was able to equalize and won the game by four goals to three.

In the 1998 World Cup, Nigeria’s poorly prepared team twice equalized and scored the winning goal to upset the Spanish national team. The Spanish team never recovered from that defeat and went back home quite early.

Then came the night of July 26, 2025, night the Super Falcons, Nigeria’s national women’s team brought back memories of those matches, night they united us. Playing against their Moroccan counterparts in the final of the 2024 edition of the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations, they were trailing two goals to nothing at half-time. With strength that came from unity of purpose and unity in execution, not only did these heroic women equalize in the second half, they also scored the winning goal in the dying minutes, when it was too late for the Moroccans to equalize.

Asked after that pulsating final match if the players did not give up at half-time when they were being led two goals to nothing, Esther Okoronkwo, engine room of the team, responded emphatically: “We are Nigerians.  We don’t give up.”

        Her teammate, Michelle Alozie, spoke in the same vein when she said: “There’s nothing that a Nigerian wants that he/she cannot achieve. It has been a positive force that drove us to achieving the ultimate.” 

But in the euphoria of the victory of the Falcons, we must not ignore a precious lesson. The Super Falcons have demonstrated that, in the absence of shared core values necessary for constituting an association of intelligent beings that a nation ought to be, the only thing that currently unites Nigerians is the game of football. Their sterling performance reminds us that the average Nigerian is abundantly industrious, exquisitely talented, and impressively capable. The Super Falcons were united in their sense of mission, united in consciousness of their objective—Mission X as they dubbed it—and united in striving to accomplish it. Indeed, the night of July 26, 2025 was night they united us.

        Two days later, Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu, speaking at the reception he accorded the victorious women and their coaching crew in the Presidential Villa, confirmed what Okoronkwo and Alozie said. The Nigerian spirit is indomitable and unyielding, echoed the President.

We are Nigerians, we don’t give up. We are Nigerians, our spirit is unyielding. Both statements are true. What is also true is that the Nigerian spirit is often dampened by the less than edifying rhetoric, and the less than unifying conduct of Nigeria’s political elite, and the disabling environment created by their rhetoric and conduct.

        Great is the accomplishment of the Super Falcons. Greater still can our accomplishments be if and when, like the Super Falcons, we conceive unity in our thoughts, formulate it in our policies, express it in our words, and demonstrate it by our actions.

Esther Okoronkwo unequivocally summed up the precious lesson we and our leaders must learn from this victory when she said, “Even when we were down, we talked to ourselves and agreed to work for each other. Unity to be real must stand the severest strain without breaking. Truly, unity remained our strongest weapon, and it paid off.”  The lesson here is unity.

While young Nigerians throw epithets at each other, scandalously competing in bigotry on social media, these young women bonded and strengthened each other to victory. While our political elite formulate and implement policies that marginalize, and deploy the tactic of divide and rule, coach of the Falcons, Justin Madugu, who hails from Adamawa State, and who could have filled team with players from his state of origin, selected the best.

The players, on their part, despite coming from different ethnic communities, showed in play and out of play that Nigerians of diverse ethnic affiliations can live together, bond and work together to accomplish a noble mission. It was a thing of beauty to see an Okoronkwo pass the ball to an Ijamilusi to score Nigeria’s equalizer. This lesson in unity is to be imbibed at this point in time when, for self-centred interest, our political elite deploy the tactic of divide and rule, manipulating our ethnic diversity in order to be declared winners.

        While we shower these young women with adulation and remuneration, let us bear in mind that they belong to a generation whose fervour for democracy is fast dwindling because of the less than democratic temperament of our political elite, and the bitter fruits of that temperament. In our euphoria, let us not forget that some Nigerians abbreviate civic rights of other Nigerians, treating them like foreigners because they belong to a different ethnic, regional or religious community.

If we care to learn, the Super Falcons—Rasheed Ajibade and companions in heroism—are teaching all of us, especially those among us who promote ethnic bigotry, that we can build a nation. And so, let the victory of these young women bring us to our senses. Let it rouse in each of us the patriotic consciousness that unity is strength. That is the greatest and most valuable appreciation, the most beautiful reception Nigeria can give them.

If we learn from the Falcons, we shall work together to build a Nigeria whose citizens are not humiliated at foreign embassies and immigration points around the world because they are in search of greener pastures in countries where xenophobia is on the increase.

If we learn from the exemplary display of unity by the Falcons on the night they united us, we shall avoid the bigotry and xenophobia we visit on each other in the name of a monstrous misconception of politics.  We shall build a nation whose sons and daughters flourish.

The writer, Father Anthony Akinwale, is Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Augustine University, Ilara-Epe, Lagos State.