ETO`O'S GIFT OF WATCHES, MISPLACED & MISGUIDED FOR NEEDY AFRICANS?

And unintelligent too! Icheoku condemns the gift of ultra-expensive designer wrist -watches made by Inter Milan's Samuel Eto`o to his country, Cameroon, world-cup team-mates as both misguided and thoughtless! A more articulate and goal-directed thoughtful benefactor would have channeled the sum into a gift that could translate into some more meaningfulness; and not to shower a wasteful $43,000 dollar wrist watches on a people, some of who do not make the equivalent of that amount yearly on their day job?

Icheoku asks, what is an African, a Cameroonian, doing with such a prohibitively exorbitant piece of extravagance, wearing on his African wrist, a watch whose price could help solve so many other very pressing issues of his community? When one factors in the fact that some of these players are locally based, not so well off like the Eto`os of this world; and in a crime-infested Cameroon, may have their wrists even chopped off with cutlass by armed bandits wishing to make off with those 'bling-blings?' What if those beneficiary players pawn off those watches as they would most probably do anyways and get their value for onward application to some more meaningful ventures?

Icheoku asks, in the absence of having their hands cut off or their pawning off those watches, what is really the utility of giving an African man, probably in need of so many other more important life-saving things, a watch valued at over twenty thousand dollars? It is Icheoku's position that, except of course it is a promotional ruse staged by a superstar player for publicity and some bragging rights among his Cameroonian audience, a player noted for his love of money and spendthrift, who ordinarily will not easily part with his cash, talk-less of the amount under advisement, such expenses is mind-boggling in absence of a catch.

An Eto`o who want to do something for his world cup team-mates would have cut them some checks, buy them some cars or given scholarship to their children or any other thing but not a $43,000 wrist-watch gift. Watches are not the best gift in the circumstance of some African-Cameroon players, who would rather their preferences were asked by Samuel Eto`o before he settled down on some time-pieces.

According to the story, Inter Milan's Samuel Eto`o splashed $1.3 million or 900,000 Pounds on several customized watches at $43, 000 dollars each on his Cameroonian world cup colleagues to fulfil a promise he made to them to induce their qualification for the world-cup 2010 in South Africa.

And if as is being alleged that Eto`o reacted to a goading by one of his country's ex-international player that he has never done anything to his country, Icheoku wonders if timepieces given to his co-players qualify as doing something for Cameroon? Why not build a community hospital, a school, buy some mosquito nets for mosquitoes infested Cameroon, pave the road, give some scholarships or even start some NGO of micro-financing to help lift millions of Cameroonian women out of poverty? There are simply one thousand and one things that Eto`o could have done to positively impact Cameroon other than a few watches for some very few wrists, assuming they will have the courage and audacity to wear them. Anyway, it is gifts by Eto`o to his people of Cameroon; and only Eto`o knows the appropriateness of such gift and also whether or not it served his purpose. But as for Icheoku and other discerning minds, it was a gift of foolery, neither needed nor wanted by impoverished Africans; and not by a bunch of Cameroonian men, kicking the round leather and hoping to do their country proud in South Africa 2010.