It wasn’t
surprising that he was part of the U-20 team that represented Nigeria at Saudi
’89. Along with the likes of Mutiu Adepoju, Jimoh “Tyson” Balogun, Christopher
Ohenhen, Tunde Charity and Philip Osondu, Dimeji played in the team that staged
the historic “Miracle of Dammam” comeback against USSR, having trailed 4-0 at
halftime.
Fondly referred
to as ‘Kabongo Makanacky Ngoy’, Dimeji Lawal is the Team Manager of Shooting
Stars; in an interview with the duo of WOLE ADEJUMO and TUNDE AYANDA, Kabongo
bared his mind on the problems facing Shooting Stars as well as the challenges
he faced as a player and of course how he came about the nickname, Kabongo
Ngoy. Excerpts:
Fatai Amoo was laid off
as the coach of Shooting Stars sometime ago, why did the management of the club
sacrifice him? Where did Amoo get it wrong?
You’ve been there as a
player and a manager, on the part of the players, did something go wrong?
When you
talk about the players, you are indirectly talking about the management and
when you talk of management, you are also talking about the owners of the club.
Let me say it this way, if a player is supposed to earn his salary in February
and he earns it in March or April, how do you think you can get the best out of
the player? When you play football, you need 100% concentration but when you
have rent, family problems and all that to cope with. I have been in a
situation where my payer was in camp for a game the following day and when I
asked why he was so down and dull, he showed me a text on his phone, the wife
sent him a text that ‘look, your son will be sent out of school. It is better
you leave this job and find another job if you are not being paid’.
Having said
that, we all know the problem in Nigeria and it is not peculiar to football.
When you talk about that, you talk about teachers, civil servants you will
understand that the economic meltdown is a global problem. The government is trying its best, its best
might however not be enough when it comes to football because football needs a
lot of investment. But what we are
expecting is that as big as Ibadan is, people should partner with the government
but people are not really showing interest.
What
happened to the Super Eagles is happening to other teams in Nigeria. In
Nigeria, people only associate themselves with success; I remember when Super
Eagles was looking for money up and down to run the team’s affairs but
immediately they qualified, somebody came in a day and gave N 50 million. Now
we have started seeing people coming to make personal donations, it is the same
thing in the club sides. Football gulps a lot of money and the government
cannot do it alone.
I laugh
sometimes when people outside who don’t talk practically, say Shooting Stars
has millions of supporters because when you check the gate takings, you find
out that half of the people that come to the stadium don’t want to pay. They
are looking for free football; you make jerseys and souvenirs, they don’t buy.
I as a TM, I know how many times I had to buy jerseys for friends and supporters.
I am not supposed to be doing that because it is a big club.
We are proud to
associate with foreign clubs, the average Ibadan man doesn’t even know as many
as five Shooting Stars’ players but he can give you the first 11 of European
clubs. What can we do to bring the kind of support we give to foreign football
to our own league?
First we
have to eradicate the culture of free things in Africa, especially in Nigeria.
It is easy for us to buy Man U jersey for N 35,000 than to buy 3SC jersey for N
6,000. When it comes to N 6,000 you see a lot of people complaining. They like
it, they want it but they don’t want to pay for it because we are used to the
saying nkan wa ni, awa la ni (it is
ours). And of course, the packaging that comes with European football year in
year out, you see a lot of changes. It all has to do with money. Buying big
players is money.
And to the
other part of your question about identifying with our clubs and players, how
could we? Our best players hardly stay in the country for six months; all they
do is play well here for three or four months, when the ovation is loud they
find one obscure club somewhere and they go out.
When I was
growing, from my head I could tell you what team IICC would present the next
weekend because I knew the players and how they performed. And those were the
kind of players we were naming ourselves after when we were growing; they were
the players we wanted to be like. We don’t have that now and like I said
earlier, welfare is paramount; no player will stay where there is suffering,
and that is the honest truth. If you want to blame them for leaving early, how
will they feed their families? How will they finance the education of their
children? How will they pay their rents? Nigerian players can hardly afford to
go on holidays, but move to one obscure club in the Arab world or Asia, you’ll
be able to afford all these little things. They even have better facilities to
work with so the problems are interwoven really.
Sometimes, you see
spiritualists coming to pray before Shooting Stars’ matches and fans believe
one of the challenges of 3SC is spiritual, do you agree? And does the club
depend on spiritualists?
People are
naïve when they say Shooting Stars base their activities on spiritualism, why
then do we train twice a day Mondays through Thursdays? And on Saturdays, why
don’t we just select 11 babalawos to
go and play? You can’t take that away that we pray and I can say categorically
that there is no team in Nigeria that does not invite spiritualists to come and
pray for them, it now depends on how you term it. It can be a pastor; it can be
an alfa or babalawo. Let me also tell you categorically that all that does not
play football. It can enhance and sometimes it is just psychological, you know
that feeling of having a backup. When people say that determines everything we
do, I don’t want to call it stupidity but they don’t know what they are talking
about.
When you look back at
your days as a footballer and look at the zeal, determination and hunger with
which you played, do we have it in today’s crop of players?
Go to the
universities; are students studying with the same zeal with which people
studied in the 1970s and 80s? Journalism
in the early days, is it the same thing with the way it is being practiced now?
Like I said, it is a peculiar Nigerian problem.
You are very
right, when I look at some players today; I see that they are people who are
unable to do any other thing and now came around to play football. It is not
because they have the talent, it is not because they are ready to work hard for
it; they just feel it is a way out and a means of survival. I started playing
from my primary school days in Ibadan here. And I remember whenever I went to Olubadan
Stadium to play even when I was as young as 8, I came home with money and gifts
from people. From there I graduated to playing for my secondary school, played
in the university, played grassroots soccer, YSFON, captained Oyo State
academicals, so people in my neighbourhood already knew that oh, this guy is
going to be a star. It wasn’t a fluke or something impromptu.
It is
something I believe in, it is something I know how to do, it wasn’t accidental
but something I worked towards. You can’t get that now, you know why? In Oyo
State with about 8 million inhabitants, we have only three paying clubs; I mean
teams that pay salaries. Let’s assume we have 1 million footballers; where will
their commitment come from? Where will zeal come from? When I was growing up,
in Ibadan alone we had about 36 clubs, paying clubs at different categories. It
doesn’t have to be the same level but at least you knew you were earning a
living through football. Where do you get that nowadays when boys will Yahoo in
the morning and come to play football in the evening?
Where are
the pitches? Where are the stadia? People are not thinking deep to find out why
we are having all these problems. Every uncompleted building has become a
school. If it’s not a school, it becomes
a church, if it is not a church, it becomes a mosque. Every playground, every
park where you play street soccer, where children begin to learn the trade has
been sold or made into a party hall. So tell me, a child that goes to school in the morning without a football pitch or sporting hall for other sporting activities, no tracks for athletics; the child closes at 2 O’ Clock and stays at school for lesson till 5, from 5 to 6, you get another teacher and does homework till evening; tell me where the talent will come out from.
I tell
people it is deliberate but they hardly believe. The leaders and the well to do
know that with football, people can get out of the ghetto, they can get out of
the streets but in Nigeria, the rich men don’t want the kids of the less
privileged to become rich like them. That is why they maintain polo grounds and
golf courses so well and they use our football pitches for parties, church
activities and all that.
When you started paying
football, how did your parents react?
So it wasn’t
that terrible but it wasn’t that easy. They did what every other parent would
do. But I think the full support from my parents came when I played in the Oyo
State team that won the Manuwa Adebajo Cup in 1984 at the academicals level. I
started receiving their support after that.
Editor's note: The second part of the interview with Oladimeji Lawal will be published on Tuesday 19th December 2017 God willing.
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