No, not another one of us! Why? Why? What is going on? What has the sports fraternity done to the elements to deserve this season of deaths? Last Wednesday, on a day when friends were preparing to go to the airport to receive the body of our friend, ‘TV Star’, Olayinka Craig, I received a call from my partner and friend, Pastor Sunny Obazu-Ojeagbase, informing me of the death, the day before, of our Chairman on the board of Complete Communications. My spirit sank immediately into a depression! No, not again! No amount of philosophy or spiritual talk could erase the feeling of helplessness that comes with confronting an invisible ‘enemy’ that creeps in unnoticed, attacks with such deadly venom that leaves ALL its defenseless victims prostrate? What is life? Death makes everything about life so meaningless! Until philosophy, spirituality, and religion provide us with some comfort! It is to that comforting zone that we all retreat to and start looking at the legacies that give some meaning but little fulfillment or relief to death!

Two weeks ago Chief Olukanmi presided at our last board meeting. I had noticed he walked with a slight almost unnoticeable unsteadiness. I supported him down the staircase to his car as we left the venue of the meeting. Like so many of us that strained and stressed our knees playing football in our youth, Chief was also paying the price. He told Sunny and I, however, that he was receiving treatment and that he would soon be okay. How could ordinary arthritic pain result in death? The news was unsettling.

I had known Chief Olufemi Olusegun Olukanmi through the entire period of my football career in Ibadan as a member of the Shooting Stars FC team of the mid-1970s to early 1980s. We teamed up again after my retirement as members of the Federal Government committee for the Implementation of Professional Football in Nigeria in 1990. 3 years later we became members of the board of the most successful Nigeria Football Association to date. When he was appointed Chairman of the Shooting Stars FC in 1991, or so, by the government of Oyo State it was to tap from his deep well of knowledge and experience in the administration of football. 1992 he led Shooting Stars to another milestone victory, becoming the first Nigerian team to win the CAF Cup. Before then, he had being my Chairman on the board of CCL since its inception. Chief Olufemi Olusegun Olukanmi, is a man with a deep reservoir of knowledge about the administration of football. His favourite pastime was discussing the game and its politics. Chief Olukanmi was one of the few Nigerians that I cannot recall wearing anything but the traditional Buba, Sokoto and Agbada of the Yoruba. He was a cultural icon and proudly upheld the tradition of his people. His ascension up the ladder of the throne in Ibadan had made some of us start to look forward to the day when he would become King! When I jokingly told him so the last time we met, he laughed and said rather prophetically, ‘that decision lies with God’.

Chief Olukanmi’s death and those of amny of the sports fraternity this past year, are again reminders of our mortality, and we must never forget that life is like a candle in the wind!