In case you missed it, FIFA, months back, rejected English Football Club, Leicester City's transfer of Belgium's Sporting Lisbon midfielder Adrien Silva because, according to FIFA, the club was 14 SECONDS TOO LATE with its application.
Some reports suggest that Leicester did file its final paperwork to FIFA with seconds to spare, but it only arrived at football's governing body 14 seconds after the deadline.
Even though Leicester has now taken its appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), the club is faced with a situation it might not have the services of the player until January over a bizarre 14-second delay in filing its application.
Indeed, one second is all that it takes between life and death, success or failure.
Yet here, we have no respect for time, even when time has no respect for anyone or anything. Perhaps, one reason why we are where we are is our lack of respect for time. Doing business can be so chaotic just because people are unable to keep to time or appointment.
You drive many kilometres for a meeting with someone who excuses his absence away on the platter of 'something cropped up'. You wait for eternity before being ushered into a meeting with people who you soon realise have not taken time to prepare for the meeting. They have absolutely no clue what the meeting is about.
You are at the meeting and people insist on going around in circles, sharing absolutely irrelevant stories, as if time is at a standstill. Yet every second ought to count.
Our public events drag on unnecessarily. No sense of time management. We engage in endless repetition and sycophancy to recognise 'special' guests with the Compere insisting on off-colour jokes, without attention to time and its essence.
We carry on as if time has no place in our lives. We spend a whole lot of it on inanities and irrelevant stuff. Yet time should matter. Every second should count if we desire to make a success of life.
In 2001, Mike Adenuga's company, CIL, controversially lost out on the GSM licence already won in a bid, even when it had already made a $20 million deposit. Its crime was allegedly failing to pay the $265 million licence fee before the deadline hour of February 9th, 2001, even though CIL and Adenuga maintained that the money was indeed transferred to the JP Morgan account of the Federal Government of Nigeria by BNP Paribas before the deadline.
Of course, there was the issue of the frequency allocated to CIL being then a subject of litigation between the FG and Chagoury, over which CIL wanted clarification before committing to a payment. But despite its reservations, CIL eventually elected to pay the $265 million fee at the very last minute. But the issue then became - Did CIL pay before the deadline as it claimed it did or it did not, as the government claimed? We might never know.
But again, it tells us - every second counts. A night is like an eternity in business. Delivery was made in a client's factory in the evening on cash on delivery basis, but payment could not be made in our favour as it was already late, as papers could not be processed that evening. We woke up, the following morning, to the news of the passing of the Head of state. The client, on account of that, has a change of mind. Opportunity lost for us.
We waste so much time here. That, perhaps, explains why we struggle over what we should ordinarily have in our back pocket.
Leicester is today paying for a debatable slip of 14 seconds.
No doubt, time is everything. Every second counts.
Olorunfemi, Simbo: - "Simbo Olorunfemi has emerged as one of the most important thought leaders on politics and governance in Nigeria. He has through the years and in very many articles and sundry commentaries, ranging from the economy to development, international relations and partisan politics, consistently applied rigour, deep thought and scientific discipline to his analysis of the people, the events and the policies that have shaped these issues, and the societies and publics that they impact. I think his strength is in his capacity to take on the big issues, the complex ideas such as ethnicity and cultural politics and also the more retail questions around the daily disputes on rightness or wrongness of government policy or their efficient or sloppy implementation, all with the same clarity of thought and presentation. His projections on political outcomes are eerily accurate, and his prescriptions are practical and clearly thought through, even if controversial"- Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, Vice President, Federal Republic of Nigeria (2015-2023)Simbo Olorunfemi is the Team Lead at Hoofbeat Dot Com, a Publishing, Strategy, and Communications Consultancy and Managing Editor of Africa Enterprise. A certified Advertising practitioner and Project Manager, he is a member of the Advertising Registration Council of Nigeria (ARCON), and the Project Management Institute. He has over 3 decades of experience initiating, executing, and managing projects and communications strategy for clients across public and private sectors. He has Masters Degrees in Political Science and International Law & Diplomacy, a postgraduate diploma in Journalism, and a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science. He received a nomination from the Nigerian Media Merit Awards for TV Producer of the Year 1991. He has three poetry books and three books on politics, policy, and governance to his credit. His first book, "Rhythm of the Coins," was the runner-up for the 1993 ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIAN AUTHORS POETRY PRIZE. He won the ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIAN AUTHORS/CADBURY POETRY PRIZE 2004 for "Eko Ree-The Many Faces of Lagos." He has maintained columns across leading newspapers in Nigeria and has been a regular Commentator for Premium Times, for years, using the platform for advocacy and policy propositions. He is a well-regarded Speaker, sharing nuggets and insights from his multi-faceted experience across many professional and life experiences. His commitment to civil society and community service is exemplified in his unbroken service to the Sunshine Foundation for the Aged, where he has served as a volunteer and Executive since 1992. He is also a member of Rotary International. Simbo Olorunfemi is the Convener of the Enterprise Development Talk, a free training platform for practising and aspiring entrepreneurs to share ideas and rub minds.
