By the time you are reading this the body of my friend, would have been laid to rest in the city where he spent the better part of his life! The past two days in Ibadan have witnessed a great celebration, that of the life of a great Nigerian and football hero, with hundreds of the inhabitants of the city trooping out in their hundreds honour one who lived amongst them and diligently served them through the best part of his life. It was indeed a celebration of the life and times of Best Ogedegbe, Member of the Order of the Niger, who died a few weeks ago as a result of complications following an eye operation!

The immediate question that came to mind is why bury him in Ibadan when he came from Delta State. It was not hard to understand the reasoning that informed this wise decision by his immediate family. Best completed his secondary school education in Ibadan. He also began his football career there. He married and had all his children in Ibadan. At the twilight of his football career as a player, even when he moved along with Rashidi Yekini, Muda Lawal, and a host of others from Shooting Stars FC of Ibadan to Abiola Babes FC of Abeokuta, he still kept his family and home in Ibadan. After retiring from the game he went into football management and coaching, travelled to the UK for a few years, and returned to take up coaching again with a few clubs and one of the national teams. All through this period until he died a few weeks ago he lived with his family in the ancient city. In all of his 55 years on earth he spent 36 of them in Ibadan. The choice of the city as his final resting place by his family should, therefore, not come as a surprise. Even though his parents were from Delta State he was born in Isale Eko in the heart of the city of Lagos and spent the first 18 years of his life there. Many times during our camping days in the national team in Lagos we went to visit his Mum in Isale Eko where she lived until she died. Most people thought he was from one of the South West States because of his proficiency of the Yoruba language plus the surname he bore, OGEDEGBE, which most persons mistook for OGEDENGBE.

It was also not a surprise, therefore, when I approached senior officials of the Delta State sports Council and asked if they wanted to participate in any way in the burial of one of their sons. The look of incredulity and the attendant silence spoke volumes and provided enough warning not to press the matter but to allow sleeping dogs to lie! So, Best Ogedegbe, Bestilla, was buried in Ibadan, his adopted home, where he was a very strong member of the Shooting Stars FC of the early 1970s and early 1980s, the great team that represented the movement of the Yoruba people at a time when teams were very potent cultural and political tools.

Best married a Yoruba girl, Shade, a tall, beautiful, unassuming, quiet but extremely focussed damsel, a broadcaster that bore him his two beautiful daughters. Shade’s role in building a close relationship for Best with his family was pivotal. She provided the building block for the evolution of a solid relationship, a happy home and wonderful, educated and upright children. Best kept his family matters close to his heart, away from the limelight and from the vagaries of life along the rough and tumble of football!

I remember him mostly from the days we traversed the world between playing for club and for country; how we occasionally shared rooms; how we went out several evenings after training to share drinks and the occasional hanging out with an endless array of ‘friends’! Many people say we look like brothers, with similar features in a lot of ways. We shared periods of joy and many moments of disappointment. The times you don’t want to be around Best were those times when we lost matches we should have won, when we let ourselves down by not doing enough to win. He was not good at hiding his emotions. He would take it out on himself. He hated to lose any match with a passion. It affected him so much I often did not want to hang around him at those moments. He would want to play everyone else’s role in the team, be player and goalkeeper at the same time. He was such a good striker that Professor Otto Gloria, in seeming desperation for want of a striker, once contemplated using him as a striker for the Green Eagles. Best was a great goal tender and goal-scorer. He knew the weaknesses of goal keepers and exploited them whenever the opportunity offered itself like in the semi-finals of the 1976 Cup winners Cup when he scored the last penalty kick that took Shooting Stars FC to the finals that year!

Best had the luck to step into the shoes of senior goalkeepers with greater reputations at critical times. In 1976 Shooting Stars had Amusa Adisa, an ageing international goalkeeper and Zion Ogunfeyimi, another great goalkeeper that had come through the junior ranks to become Shooting Stars’ first choice goalkeeper. Halfway through the Africa Cup winners Cup competition Best stepped in when Zion was injured and never let go of the position after that. The same thing happened with the great Emmanuel Okala, the first African goalkeeper to be named Africa’s Best player. On the eve of the 1980 Africa Cup of Nations Best had the opportunity to substitute Okala in a game, grabbed it with both hands and never let go after that. I can’t remember how it happened but it did, Best rose to become the best goalkeeper of his era.

Best intimidated players and officials into submission with an ‘arrogant’ posturing, his swagger and infectious confidence. He acted and walked as if the entire world was secure in his pocket, as if he owned it all. On top of all that he would boast and talk and dare you to shoot past him if you could. His training was to bet against the best strikers that they could not score him. ‘Pride’ was his best weapon at improving his skills. Best was a very positively ‘proud’ guy. He was proud of he was and his ability and would let everyone around him know. He would often beat his chest and tell opposing attackers during a game that they were wasting energy and effort because they could not put the ball behind him. Through the period of his career he made many attackers fearful of him in goal. I can’t recall how often he got away with it and attackers froze. Even the great Roger Miller in 1976 was made to look ordinary in 180 minutes of the epic confrontation between Shooting Stars and Tonnerre Kalala which ‘Sooting’ won with major contribution by Best Ogedegbe!

Best Ogedegbe was buried yesterday. Those of us who shared time with him in the course of his sojourn here on earth would miss and remember him greatly! He was a great guy, a fantastic footballer, a brilliant goalkeeper, a totally detribalised Nigerian and a great inspirer through example! Throughout his life in football he never failed to tell everyone and act it out on the field of play, that he was Simply the Best!