Eboue's ‘love’ blues: Media impact, social media distract, racist construct

There are so many positives that media has/can champion/ed. I won’t go into instances because there’s be too many. I’d stick to the issue at hand. How a man who earned millions of euros could overnight become so poor as to be washing his own clothes is one for the novels.

Throws me back to the Biblical story of ‘the lost son,’ here was a footballer who literally fought for an earned his inheritance – rightfully so. He lost it overnight to his ‘love’ and financial naivety in a story that is very much strictly a one-sided tell-all tale from him.

Emmanuel Eboue, a top-flight footballer who was once just a game from winning the topmost prize in European football went 360 in few years time and was just an hour, a day, a week (who knows) from taking his life because of loses and shame due to his choices and name.

The U.K. Sunday Mirror, as a humanitarian move broke the story of Eboue’s woes. It lit the better part of social media in a matter of hours. Eboue, literally laid out his life from native Ivory Coast up to Europe. The missteps, the mysteries, the miscalculations and mishaps – most of them self-inflicted.

But of the social media commenters – I’m not moaning over people’s view and why at all should I especially on the vast expanse of social media? My issue is the detract that some people plunge into and the subsequent racist construct vis-à-vis Eboue’s wife.

A few mind tickling questions before I go on:

1. Zero media attention divorce involving a top player his caliber till now, how is that?
2. Without his wife’ version, is it fair to take Eboue’s story as gospel in its entirety?
3. Which court grants a woman 100% of her husband’s assets in case of a divorce?
4. The story doesn’t tell the grounds on which the wife filed for divorce. 

It is sad that he got to the edge of the cliff but refreshingly relieving that he was snatched from the precipice. His admissions of financial naivety and trust for a legally wedded partner falls back on him. That he was ill-advised is because of who he chose to roll with.

Yet for some people on social media, it had to do with an ‘evil woman’ worse than a ‘white woman’ – the chauvinist plus racist poisonous combination. All of a sudden, there is a qualitative and quantitative research on why Africans should trust African women strictly.

All of a sudden, other African footballers who are married to white ladies have become targets of unfathomable ridicule, that they’d be sweating by now over what is happening to Eboue.

But it is symptomatic of social media, isn’t it? A ‘playground’ where people bandy about hasty generalizations and advance fallacious arguments based on half-baked facts – sometimes without facts, try politics. Lol!

The adult called Eboue who left home and after years earning big bucks still did not deem it fit to invest a CFA back home has himself entirely to blame. That was a decision he took or was convinced to take but surely a gun wasn't put to his head in that respect.

The resource called social media should not expose us so much that we play along with what I call convenient facts. Of course, if it is for the jocular value of it, why not? But let’s resist rather insist on more cogent lines of thought and experience sharing where need be.

And how can I forget to say ‘thank you’ to Turkish giants Galatasaray for offering to employ their former employee? Except against Arsenal, I’ll support the Istanbul side against any other opposition despite being rivals of ex-Ghana skipper Stephen Appiah’s Fernabache.

Eboue entered a marital relationship that has lasted 14 years. It bore fruits of three kids, he worked hard and earned to cater for his family. The relationship has all but crashed, he nearly crashed with it but alas has a second bite of the cherry, shot at goal if you want.

The social media distract and racist constructs should do themselves a favour by halting in their ‘attacks,’ reverse play and know that in today’s world except for narcissists, there should be no room for racist and chauvinist overtures – overt or covert. We’ve come too far for that!