The Onigbinde that I knew – a humble tribute!

I was one of many that did not like Chief Festus Onigbinde (that’s how he was referred to at the time) when I first encountered him half a Century ago, around 1976.


He came in from the blue.

He was not known in the football circles of the old Western Region, or any football circle anywhere for that matter. He had no known pedigree either in playing the game,…or in coaching it. He did not ‘exist’ in the football firmament until he was recruited by the Oyo State Sports Council as one of several coaches to drive grassroots football development in the very ambitious new Oyo State in 1976.


He was the least known of that generation of coaches that mostly emerged from the cadre of former national team players – Ayo Adeniji, Jide Johnson, Olu Onagoruwa, Bayo Alli. These were all renowned ex-internationals.


Chief Festus Onigbinde started to attract some attention in Ibadan when he was posted to coach Water Corporation FC, a team made up mostly of players from the academicians cadre. They had been a constant threat to IICC Shooting Stars FC, the club that was being promoted as the counter ‘movement’ of the Yoruba people to Rangers FC of Enugu, the team from the East of River Niger that emerged following the Civil War. It was a deliberate, well-planned strategy by the Igbo to use football as a soft power tool to lead ‘defeated’ ‘Biafrans’ back into the mainstream of life in Nigeria by rising to the apex of the only sport that occupied a special place in the head and heart of all Nigerians.


Chief Onigbinde was an object of ‘dislike’ only because the threat posed by Water Corporation FC under him was real and serious. The matches between the two clubs in Ibadan were wars. His posting to Water Corporation was not intended to make life difficult for Shooting Stars FC in Ibadan and to produce another champion. The city could not accommodate two champions without affecting the sponsoring spirit behind ‘Sooting Star’.


All the other clubs in Oyo State were unofficially considered ‘feeder’ teams, their best players always gravitating to ‘Sooting’.


Despite the acute rivalry between them, however, I cannot recall Water Corporation FC defeating IICC Shooting Stars FC more than once in the encounters between them even with coach Onigbinde as the coach. It took a twist of fate for Chief Onigbinde’s fortune and his relationship with Ibadan to change and for him to move from the shadows into the sunlight of coaching.


It all started in 1976.

IICC Shooting Stars won the league as well as the African Cup Winners Cup that year.

Rangers of Enugu were FA Cup winners and qualified to play in the 1977 Africa Cup Winners Cup.

IICC had to choose between representing Nigeria in the Champions League, or defending their continental title. They chose to forfeit the Champion’s League opportunity, surrendering it to ‘sister’ club, Water Corporation FC from Oyo State, Third-placed on the league table.


That’s how Water Corporation FC came from ‘nowhere’ to play in the African Club Championship of 1977.


The responsibility fell on Chief Onigbinde to coach the team. He had great young players in the squad. Under his guidance, the Ibadan club got to the quarter-finals of the championship! It was an awesome performance by the club, and Nigerians noted the work of the ‘pilot’ – Chief Onigbinde.


In 1982, when Nigerian football was in crisis following the abysmal performance of the Green Eagles at the AFCON in Libya, the position of Chief coach of the national team was advertised. Chief Onigbinde along with many others applied.


The interviews became the platform for Chief Onigbinde’s to display his intellectual skills and depth. His eloquence, his presentation and the quality of his responses to the questions asked, blew away all competition. The Technical Committee that conducted the tests had no choice but to hand over that exalted position to a deserving Festus Onigbinde!


The big question on the lips of most football followers in the country was: ‘who is Onigbinde?’.

The man answered by changing his name.

It was a big transformation from ‘Festus’ Onigbinde, the man from Modakeke, a former artist, an actor and a member of a traveling Yoruba theatre group in the old Western Nigeria, a secondary school teacher and games master, a coach that took Water Corporation FC to the fringes of Africa’s most coveted Club Championship trophy in his first attempt, to a new man, a new coach to handle Nigeria’s national football team.

The man declared that thenceforth he should be called and addressed with his new and full Cultural identity – Chief Adegboye Onigbinde.


That’s how he was reborn and his meteoric rise in football coaching began. The rest of his story is in well-documented history.


He took the national team, the Green Eagles to the African Cup of Nations in 1984 in Cote D’Ivoire, gave many youngsters a chance in his team, and returned in second place, the first Nigerian coach to achieve that feat.


When he returned to Oyo State after his two-year stint in the national team, he had become a national hero and a toast of the Ibadan people. His ‘sins’ of coaching Water Corporation were quickly forgotten and the fans had no difficulty handing over the coaching of Shooting Stars FC, league champions of that year (1983) and qualifier for the 1984 African Club Championship, to him.


He accepted the challenge to lead Shooting Stars FC to its biggest challenge. He coached the team all the way to the finals of the 1984 Champions Cup. The team lost to Zamalek FC of Egypt in a match destined by the elements Not to be won by IICC Shooting Stars FC. He later became the Club’s General Manager, and changed the name of the club to Shooting Stars Sports Club (3SC), a name I believe that has robbed the original Shooting Stars FC of ‘something’.


Almost two decades later, in 2002, he was recalled again to lead Nigeria’s national team to the 2002 Korea/Japan World Cup.

That assignment was an adventure for Chief Onigbinde. It revealed many other sides and skills of the man. I was in close alliance with him through that period before and after the World Cup. That he became an instructor and member of several study groups for both CAF and FIFA was no surprise. When he talked football, everyone listened with attention. On the field of training or play, Chief Adegboye Onigbinde was not your usual coach. There was something different about his style, his methodology, his team tactics and in his training sessions.


From watching him at work, many have doubted the high quality of his coaching. Yet, beneath the ordinary exterior of his coaching methods are records of accomplishments that cannot be denied or diminished.


Until his passage this past week, he was one of Nigeria’s most resourceful football personalities. His views and thoughts on football development were always to the indisputable point. His conduct was impeccable. His self-confidence was uncanny and infectious. He had a way of transferring this confidence to his players and of taking them to new heights in self belief and performance.


Chief Adegboye Onigbinde, lived a long, fruitful and mostly fulfilled life. He always wanted focus on football development rather than football competitions, a wish that never manifested in the manner he wanted till he passed on last week. Too bad.


As he returns to our Creator, on behalf of all of us players that went through him, I wish him a peaceful journey Home!