The European leagues go on a short break this weekend. So, I sheath my first football analysis and comments on this season until later.
This weekend also Nigeria’s Super Eagles will play their first international match under their new coach. There is only one thing at stake in the match, national pride. Only a good performance will loosen the noose around the neck of the NFF.
In the absence of these two issues, permit me to steer this page in a more personal direction.
Last Saturday afternoon, I had to prick myself over and over again that I was not dreaming. It was my birthday!
As usual, I did not mark it in any way. But to my greatest shock and pleasant surprise, no other birthday had been as elaborately and as massively marked for me as was done by hundreds (probably over a thousand) of friends on several social media platforms.
I do not know how it started or who started it but I saw the handwriting of my children as well as close friends in the unscripted conspiracy to celebrate me as lavishly as they did whilst I am still alive and kicking to experience this avalanche of encomiums, praises and goodwill messages that left me thoroughly humbled and grateful!
That day, and indeed for days after that, the messages kept coming with people’s kind words, a soothing balm to my troubled mind agitated by the shameful poor state of Nigerian sport with its dilapidated infrastructure, mediocre administration and a history littered with the plight of forgotten, neglected and disrespected former sports heroes languishing in poverty and poor health.
I am very blessed and privileged to receive these wonderful, unsolicited, unearned and totally unexpected effusions of encouraging and spiritually uplifting words, prayers and goodwill messages whilst I am still alive.
I thank my Creator for the opportunity to be able to respond and say Thank You to every one of them for their unrequited shower of love and friendship. Not everyone is that lucky or gifted by the universe.
All of this now challenge me and reinforce my commitment to continue to add my little bit to the effort of all others determined to make a difference in the world!
The story of Taofeek Abiodun Still on personal matters, I ask everyone to read this.
I stumbled on a young man some weeks ago whose story, I believe, would one day make a fairytale blockbuster movie.
He is 17 going on 18 years of age. He is from Oyo State, Nigeria.
Two years ago, he withdrew from the public secondary school he was attending because he was being bullied by fellow students who took his massive physique as an object of daily ridicule. Life was hell. He could not walk on the street where he lived with his parents without people harassing him with taunts. He was the butt of jokes and name-calling.
He became a psychological wreck and recluse locking himself up indoors for almost two years. Slowly and steadily he was wasting away as his esteem and self-confidence were been gradually sucked out of him.
He would always curse the day he was born different from all other children.
Abiodun’s ‘abnormality’ is that he is a big lad. He is probably the tallest 18-year-old, not only in the city of Ibadan but in Nigeria. He stands 7ft 2inches tall with a slight stoop that may be the result of his subconscious effort to make himself look shorter.
His feet are size 53.
The good news is that in the past three months, Abiodun has been introduced to basketball by a concerned neighbour who also got in touch with me and wanted me to intervene and to help the young man.
I jumped at the offer, grateful for the opportunity to be a part of the future of this young exceptional gift from God to sport. A boy with the physical attributes that Abiodun in any other clime, but Nigeria has an almost certain route to being a sport hero.
So, the plan is to prepare him well with proper guidanc
