Another Jet is down and out!

The Mighty Jets Football Club of Jos emerged on the Nigerian soccer scene in the late 60s or thereabouts. The club was a metamorphosis of the Plateau Highlanders of Jos that produced legends like Tunde Balogun (nicknamed Thunder Balogun because of the explosive shots his feet produced), Dan Anyiam, Francis Duru, etc.

Arguably one of the most compact and entertaining football outfits to come out of Nigeria, the Mighty Jets of Jos was a creation of the late Joseph Dechi Gomwalk, the first Military Governor of Plateau state in the Gowon administration. The soccer-loving governor got Alhaji Isyaku Ibrahim, an international business mogul, to run the club as a private enterprise.

The club soon took the Nigerian football scene by storm, winning the maiden national football league in 1971. By that feat, it qualified to represent Nigeria in the African Clubs Football Championship. Having won the first leg in Nigeria against an Upper Volta side (now Burkina Faso), the club went for the return leg played in Ouagadougou. The match stretched into extra time and as it was getting dark, spectators had to light newspapers around the pitch to improvise floodlights! With poor visibility and harassment of the visiting players at the touchline (some of them nearly got incinerated), the hosts won the match.

The defining moment of the Mighty Jets was written during the 1972 Challenge Cup Final against the Bendel Insurance Football Club of Benin played at the Onikan Stadium, Lagos. The first generation of the Jets can be compared to the squad Nigeria paraded at the USA ’94 World Cup Finals. Everyone in the 1972 final was a round peg in a round hole. The squad was built around a highly gifted and, arguably, the best attacking midfield I have seen in my entire career as a sports journalist, Sam Garba Okoye, of blessed memory.

In the said encounter, the Bendel Insurance had everything under their feet, leading by two clear goals with just five minutes to go. With the clock winding down in favour of the Insurers, their supporters had begun to troop out of the stadium, chanting victory songs and dancing. That was the moment when Sam Garba, nicknamed the Master Dribbler, wielded his magic legs and pulled a goal back. The ovation that greeted the goal was erroneously taken to be in support of the winning team and their supporters increased the volume of their songs and the tempo of their dance. Then came the equalising goal also from the same joy-killer Garba, just as the centre referee and FIFA-badge Sunny Badru was about to sound the final whistle. The whistle froze between Badru’s lips. That indecision, probably borne out of shock, cost him his career.

Pandemonium broke out and it was the turn of Jets’ supporters that included Joseph Gomwalk himself to take to the dance floor, watched by his good friend and governor of Mid-West state, Brigadier Samuel Ogbemudia. Such was the feat of Sam Garba. When the soccer legend, King Pele visited Nigeria in July 1975 and was made to play on both sides of Green Eagles Teams A and B in the two halves at the National Stadium, Lagos, Sam was detailed to police the Brazilian soccer star. At the end of the match, Pele publicly acknowledged our own legend as the best of his generation on the African continent.

A replay of the Challenge Cup finals was fixed for a week later and the venue was moved to the Liberty Stadium, Ibadan, in anticipation of bigger crowd, where the Insurers overpowered the Jets by a lone goal. It was not the first time the Jets would lose in the finals of the prestigious Championship as was with the Highlanders before them. That was to earn the Jets the appellation, “S’oroye” meaning one who sees the throne but never gets to sit on it in Yoruba, despite their unmatchable methodical play on the field.

What prompted this piece was the news of the death of one of the defence pillars of the team named Uba Junior which was posted on the social media on Thursday. I quickly put a call to his former skipper and partner in the last line of defence, Field Marshall Ismaila Mabo. Upon picking my call, he wanted to break the news to me but I told him it was the reason for my call.

I knew Uba had been ill and even incapacitated. The legs that brought him fame had failed him at the twilight of his life. The last time I was in Jos, Mabo told me about his condition but I could not pay him a visit because I was racing against time to avoid a night journey back to Abuja.

By his death, Uba has joined the long list of the first generation of the (Mighty) Jets to be shot down by death. The first to come down in July, 1978, was Sam Garba who was killed not in a jetliner but on the highway while on official assignment to Lafia. He had retired from active football and had undergone a coaching course in Brazil, sponsored by Alhaji Isyaku Ibrahim. The other beneficiaries were Ismaila Mabo and Matthew Atuegbu, the senior of the four Atuegbu brothers starring for the club. The other three were Andrew, Aloysius the Blockbuster and Nicholas. If death had not struck, Sam Garba would have ended up as a national coach for the senior team. He had all it took to get to the apogee of his football career. Small wonder that Field Marshall Mabo became one of the most successful chief coaches of the Super Falcons!

Thirty years later, another Jet was down and out. He was Layi Olagbemiro. Layi was in the 1972 squad. He was a winger of immense talents. Nicknamed Eusebio because of his resemblance with the Portuguese soccer legend Eusebio Pereira, Layi had the speed of a jet and the weight of a caterpillar. Watching him bulldozing through the wing was a delight.

Midfielder Ali Lime is also gone. When we formed the Recreational Highlanders FC, I found him very exciting to play with. I remember during one of our training sessions at the pitch of the secondary school wing of the University of Jos along Bauchi Road, Jos, I scored an award-winning half-volley goal from a corner kick. The ball was careering across the post when I emerged to divert it with the outside of my right foot. As the keeper was hitting the ground in a wrong direction, the ball hit the roof of the net. Ali Lime was so excited with the master class that he came and hugged me and prayed thus in Hausa: “Allah ya bamu iri wanna goal a match”, meaning May God give us this kind of goal in a real match situation.

The nucleus of the Recreational Highlanders was made up of a handful of members of the first generation of the Mighty Jets. The idea was to showcase our skills and inspire the younger ones. Ismaila Mabo and Uba Jr. maintained their traditional 5 and 6 positions… same with our own Eusebio as No. 11.

Other members of the team were Bitrus Bewarang (now Technical Director of the Nigeria Football Federation), Nda Liman and diminutive midfielder Andrew Mateta, who along with Bitrus Bewarang struck a telepathic understanding with me as a pacy, top striker.

One year, the team registered in the Challenge Cup and we were cruising towards the state final. Then, at a point we began to wonder if we had the capacity to contest at the national level. It was obvious that we were fantasising. Age was not on our side anymore! So, we had to plot our own defeat at the semi-final stage.

Uba Junior’s demise is as painful as the others before him. He was fond of calling me “Up Chair” because I was the pioneer chairman of the Standard FC of Jos (now Plateau United) that became a thorn in the flesh of the Mighty Jets and put an end to their monopoly in the late 70s and beyond.

May Almighty Allah grant his soul aljanat firdaus, and also grant his family and all the surviving members of the Mighty Jets FC the fortitude to bear the irreparable loss, Ameen.

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