Let me leave the matter of Angola and the national team for now and write about what ails my heart. As we celebrate football in Angola, let us take a moment to mourn the loss of over 400 innocent people, Nigerians, to death in a senseless orgy of violence in the city of Jos. Let me tell readers again about Jos, my relationship with the city and how it has influenced football development in Nigeria.

I am in the process of writing my fourth book to be published this year to mark 50 years of Nigerian football! There is a particular chapter that is generating a lot of excitement amongst those working with me on the project. Getting materials for the chapter attempts to engage Nigerians in a process of selecting 50 football legends in 50 years of Nigerian football! As we were working on a possible list for consideration we discovered that a large number on those listed passed through the playing fields of Jos. Yes, the same Jos that in the past few years has become the theatre for all kinds of agitations from political to social, religious, ethnic and even hunger and poverty! It is a great tragedy that in the process of these agitations the playing fields that dominated the Jos landscape have been turned to killing fields. The city once described as Eden of Nigeria has become hell!

Massacre in Jos

The past week has been one long hell for all those living or that have relatives in Jos. I grew up in the city, spent the first 17 years of my life going to school there and been schooled in the ways of life and of football! My parents lived in Jos for well over 60 years and my mother, even as I write this, is still in Jos, holed up in the house my younger sister built. My late Uncle settled in Jos in the 1940s and became the patriarch of the Odegbami family and one of the most prominent Yoruba’s that had settled down to a sequested life and made Jos their home. I do not know about the politics of the place so I cannot comment much., but what I know is that my mother is presently in Jos, ‘imprisoned’ in the past almost two weeks by the unfortunate circumstance imposed on the citizenry by an irate group of people. She cannot now wait to get out of Jos and never return again. For the first time in 66 years, or so, since she settled in Jos the thought crossed her mind. It speaks volumes. Three months earlier my mum had disturbed my peace and asked me to take her back to Lagos. She had wanted to spend the rest of her life in Jos but has since given up on that idea. All it took is the realisation that the crisis this time is worse than at any time in the history of Jos. My sisters’ restaurant, her only source of livelihood, that had been serving the people of the city for 27 years, was razed to the ground by unknown hoodlums. The beauty, the tranquillity, the peace, all would now be lost for decades to the orgy of unrestrained and unrestricted killings! Suddenly all of the nostalgic feelings and spirit have disappeared in a plume of madness! My mum and sister are distraught. Both of them hardly sleep anymore, their lives temporarily halted and the trauma of their experience now a haunting nightmare!

Let me tell you about Jos, the city on the plateau that I grew up in, the city that is my football roots. In those days there was no public transportation in the city. Everyone walked everywhere, from one end of the city to the other. It was such a close community also that everyone knew each other. We were all born in either one of the two missionary hospitals. We went to the same few schools. We played together on the same playgrounds. We all religiously followed football in the country. It was the number one sport amongst the youths of Jos and every young boy wanted to be a football hero like Samuel Garba and co. We all lived as totally detribalised Nigerians speaking a common language of friendship and love, and sharing the same space peacefully. Our parents all came from different parts of Nigeria and settled amongst the people in Jos, a situation that would have served as model for the rest of the world on how to live together even in the face of several natural and man-made differences had the violence not started to rubbish such thoughts. The peace of Jos was shattered for the first time by the pogrom of 1966. Till this day the town is still paying the price for that and subsequent shameful periods of its history. Things have grown worse since then. They came to a head in the past two weeks!

Many of the families I grew up with are still in Jos. None of them has escaped a serious loss. Many lost family, friends and property. The stories are endless and gory! As I write this I easily recall the families from my past – Menta, Nakande, Dogu, Carew, Igoh, Bassey, Majekodunmi, Cole, Adesina, Dalleys, Gardner, Dankaros, Akiga, Ibn-Mohammed, Atuegbus, Alli, Nakande, Otakpo, Omewah, all living side by side with the Bentus, the Yllsus, the Miris, the Pams, the Shelongs, the Gyangs, the Dwamlongs. We were all one happy family! Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that any generation of these people will lift a finger against each other for some murderous purpose. The devil has seized the minds of people and turned them into heartless, vicious fanatics that would stop at nothing until everything is destroyed including their souls. What a pity as well as a shame.

I have been invited to be a part of a peace and reconciliation team, a group of ‘settlers’ and ‘indigenes’ coming together, joining hands in establishing new programmes and projects to remind all about the peace and love of the past, and to illuminate a new attitude and path for all into the future. It is a peace movement that draws its strength from the good of the past to remind everyone of what life used to be, how far away from that we have moved, how much damage to self we have inflicted on ourselves, and the economic and social opportunities this once-beautiful and friendly environment has missed but can still regain.

Back to football. it is this same environment that produced Samuel Garba, Peter Anieke, Ismaila Mabo, Layiwola Olagbemiro, Tunde Abeki, Erewa. Tony Igwe, Christopher Ajilo, Godwin Ogbueze, John the Babus, Dehinde and Remi Morris, David and Sunday Dankaro, Fabian Duru, Amusa Shittu, Patrick Pascal, Wole Odegbami, Mikel Obi, Ben Akwuegbu, Sam Pam, and many others. The list is long! This is also the land of other great artists like Peter Igho, Dan Maraya, Sadiq Daba, Yakubu Mohammed, Desmond Elliot, Fred Amata, Christabel Bentu, P-Squared, and so on! From the ashes of the present death and destruction in Jos we must build a new community and a future based on mutual respect and love. I admit the hurt is deep everywhere and healing is easier said than done, but start we must on this course, hoping that, one by one, all shall see the senselessness of the present times and choose the possibility of a much better future living with our differences but together! Let’s therefore share a moment for all those that died in this senseless orgy of death!

segunodegbami@hotmail.com