ICONS: Chief Festus Adegboye Onigbinde

• Born March 5, 1938, in Modakeke, Osun State, Nigeria.

• Adegboye Onigbinde is a Nigerian football coach, administrator and technocrat.

• He has served as CAF and FIFA technical instructor.

• He coached Nigeria’s national team at the 2002 FIFA World Cup, and previously he had handled the team between 1982 and 1984.

• In 1984, he took Nigeria into the final match of the Africa Nations Cup.

• Coach Onigbinde, the highly respected Nigerian soccer tactician took over the Nigerian national team after the sack of the coaching crew of Shuaibu Amodu following what was considered a disgraceful performance of the Super Eagles at the 2002 Africa Nations Cup. Chief Onigbinde took a team that consisted largely of young and inexperienced players to the year’s World Cup finals in South Korea/Japan.

• According to Onigbinde himself, on BBC Sport Online, Adegboye is not one of his original names:

‘I dropped my baptismal name ‘Festus’ in 1960 through Nigeria’s Daily Times newspaper and have been answering [no ‘to’] Festus Onigbinde… I discovered Festus didn’t mean anything, so I changed to ‘Adegboye’, meaning ‘a child born to reclaim a chieftaincy title’.

• Chief Adegboye Onigbinde is now 86 and still going strong.

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