Last Saturday was winding down like any other day when Coach Ismaila Mabo put a call to me. Coach Mabo and I are always in touch through the social media. His voice at the other end did not give a hint about any bad news. So, I thought it was his usual call to the Chair as he normally refers to me.
Then, he dropped a bombshell the way he would despatch set pieces to the vital areas as a central defender in his playing days. As my captain in the Plateau Highlanders XI regrouped for retired footballers, he always relied on me to finish off his set pieces. One of my greatest assets as an attacker was speed, honed through sprinting after bushmeat in my childhood days as a hunter.
“Chair,” he said, “we have lost one of us again! Alhaji Sule Kekere is gone.”
My jaw dropped. Sule Kekere had been battling with health challenges, culminating in his sight loss. When I first heard about his loss of sight, the eyes that he relied on to score goals, I remembered the Brazilian legend and Pele’s team mate, Tostao. An accomplished winger whose stock-in-trade was to turn defence inside out before hitting the back of the net or giving assists, Tostao’s career was cut short owing to his eye problems. And the entire soccer world was left in a state of shock.
Kekere was not Sule’s surname. He got the moniker from his dimunitive stature. Curiously, his club, the Highlanders of Jos, assigned to him the role of a top striker! Physically, Sule Kekere did not possess the attributes of a target man: good height and bullish body. He fell below the shoulders of most defenders he had to contend with. But what he lacked in height and muscularity, he was compensated in speed, an eye for goals and legs laced with deceit! For Sule Kekere, delivering the goods was not by might but by soccer sense… and he had the sixth sense.
Sule Kekere could mock the best of defenders and goalkeepers. Throughout his playing career, Kekere never lost a spot kick. He had this uncanny habit of coming over the ball like a vulture would descend on a carcass. Then, he would drop his shoulder to send the goalkeeper the wrong way before planting the ball in the far corner of the net. It was always a delight to see defenders backpedalling whenever Sule handled the ball because no one, not even the god of soccer, could predict the direction he was going.
I began to watch Sule Kekere very closely when I joined The Nigeria Standard Newspaper of Jos as its sports editor in the 70s. By then, the Highlanders had morphed to the Mighty Jets of Jos. There was a particular Challenge Cup quarterfinal duel between the defunct Alyufsalam Rocks of Ilorin and the Mighty Jets of Jos played in 1976. In that encounter, the Jets were fitted with their star players that included the master-dribbler Sam Garba Okoye, right winger Babalola Olugbodi, three of the four Atuegbu brothers (Matthew, Aloysius and Andrew), skipper Ismaila Mabo, Uba Junior, Bayo Adenuga, left winger Layi Olagbemiro, nicknamed Eusebio because of his striking semblance with Portuguese legend, Eusebio Perreira and, of course, the mercurial target man Sule Kekere.
The burden was on the three Ogbomoso musketeers: Kekere, Eusebio and Babalola. However, the Jos lads unleashed all weapons in their arsenal to overpower the Ilorin boys who were relatively new on the Nigerian soccer scene but they failed. The prides of Kwara, after subduing the dreaded Jos boys, got to the final of the prestigious football championship but met their waterloo in the hands of the Rangers International FC of Enugu.
The Alyufsalam is the onomatopoeia of Alhaji Yusuf Salami, the financier of the Ilorin team, who was so impressed with the performance of his boys at the Onikan Stadium that he shared wristwatches to the two teams and their officials after the epic encounter. Surprisingly, the Alyufsalam Rocks, dissolved into oblivion thereafter.
At the end of the quarterfinal encounter, I lost my appetite and struggled to get my sleep because the Jets lost to a team from my home state. Such was the kind of love the Jets attracted from all over the country. The Jos lads were a delight to watch. It is on record that the Jets had appeared in the Challenge Cup finals more than any other clubs in the country from the late 60s to the late 70s (perhaps, up to a dozen times) with no trophies to show for their efforts. The Yoruba soccer buffs nicknamed them “So roye”, meaning throne seers. In other words, they sighted the cup several times but never won it.
Sule Kekere was born in Jos like most of his mates in the first generation of Mighty Jets. Like me, he lost his Ogbomoso identity to Plateau. He died in Jos and was buried in the Tin City. I lived the better part of my life in Jos until I relocated to Abuja a little over a decade ago. But for his exploits in football, the name Sule Kekere would not ring any bell. Mention my name in Offa and everyone would fire blank! Not so in Jos.
For instance, a mail was once addressed to me in the early 80s when my sports and humour columns were causing The Nigeria Standard Newspapers to sell like hot cakes on Saturdays and Sundays. The envelope bore only my name and its destination, Jos. The sorters at the Jos Post Office knew which PMB or Private Mail Bag to drop the envelope. If it were now, the envelope would have been handed over to President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) for onward transmission to me! Today, what immediately springs to mind at the mention of PMB is not Private Mail Bag anymore but Mr. President!
After Coach Mabo broke the news to me, we could not help but reel out the names of the Jets which death has shot down with its anti-aircraft gun. First to come down in 1978 among the first generation of the Mighty Jets was arguably one of the best midfielders to come out of the continent, Sam Garba Okoye. Our own Eusebio followed in 2009.
Thereafter, the anti-aircraft carrier has been targeting these exponents of Nigerian soccer one after the other: Aloysius “Blockbuster” Atuegbu, Matthew and Nicholas Atuegbu, leaving only Andrew, Ali Lime and Uba Jr. who passed on in June, last year. Uba was incapacitated for a very long time. The legs that brought him fame failed him in the twilight of his life. In all, we counted eight of the regular XI downed by death.
On Thursday morning, I put a call to Bayo Adenuga, one of the key components in the Mighty Jets’ defence, to inform him about Kekere’s death. I remember attending the send-off party organised for him at the Plateau Hotel, Jos, when he exited the Mighty Jets. When Bayo read the tribute I wrote on Uba Jr., he got my phone line and we spent almost 45 minutes reliving the good old days in Jos, intermittently expressing his shock.
The news of Sule’s death also devastated him. He recalled Kekere’s exploits, noting that he was never cautioned or sent off the pitch throughout his playing career. He was a complete gentleman on and off the field.
May Allah grant Sule Kekere’s soul Aljannah firdaus and his family the fortitude to bear the profound loss, Ameen.
