Remembering Rashidi Yekini

FOR a spell, legendary goal poacher, Kaduna-born Rashidi Yekini, was the most riveting story in Nigerian and African football. Yekini was not, even at the acme of his golden career, the most talented member of the Nigerian male football team, the Super Eagles. As a matter of fact, in almost everything that Yekini could do, there was always another player who could do it better. For example, he did not have the sheer talent of Etim Esin, without question the single most naturally gifted player in the history of Nigerian football. Nor did he possess the dribbling capacity of, say, Segun “Mathematical” Odegbami, Austin “Jay-Jay” Okocha, the mesmerizing Ndubuisi Okosieme, or the enchanting Benjy Nzeakor. Mutiu “Headmaster” Adepoju was a better header of the ball (arguably the best in all of Nigerian football); and as for effortless leadership on the field, Christian Chukwu, Okey Isima, and Stephen Keshi were streets ahead.

What Yekini had in gratuitous abundance was the instinct of a born scorer. In this, he was peerless to such an extent that the whole of Nigerian football could be roughly divided into two distinct eras: pre- and post-Yekini. Long before Sir Alex Ferguson, the legendary Manchester United manager, invented the “hole” (that nebulous space between the midfield and the eighteen-yard box) for Paul Scholes to drift in and out of, Yekini had made it his natural residence, from where he foraged into the box undetected like an invisible drone, punishing spills by careless goalkeepers, and generally making life miserable for at least two generations of defenders. Yekini also packed a shot and, for a big man, controlled the ball with such elan.

His goal-scoring record speaks for itself: 45 in 53 games for the then IICC Shooting Stars over a two-year spell, 37 goals in 62 appearances for the Super Eagles (still a record), and a goal-strewn career across Cote d’Ivoire, Spain, Tunisia, Greece, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, and Switzerland. Wherever Yekini played, he scored, often emerging as the highest scorer. Yekini famously scored the first ever goal by Nigeria at the senior World Cup with his strike against Bulgaria, a match the Super Eagles went on to win 3-0. In 1993, he became the country’s first ever African Footballer of the Year.

For all his exploits and accomplishments on the field, Yekini was a remarkably simple man who had little time for niceties. In July 1991, the Super Eagles hosted Burkina Faso at the National Stadium in Lagos in a qualifying game for the 1992 African Cup of Nations tournament. When, due to a bureaucratic mix up, the players’ jerseys did not arrive on time from Ibadan, Yekini, ever the practical man, was the first to grab a pair of scissors, trim down a pair of tracksuits, and briskly announce that he was ready to play. The rest of the team promptly followed suit and took to the pitch in their unusual gear. The Super Eagles won that game 7-1, with Yekini contributing four of the goals.

If Nigerian football, at least in the scoring department, could be divided into a pre- and post-Yekini era, it is telling that no other Nigerian striker since Yekini’s passing in May 2012 has been able to fill his massive boots. It is not just that the country has not had another striker comparable in sheer footballing instinct; the problem is that no other Super Eagles striker has come close in terms of consistency. Many have simply flattered to deceive, scoring a flurry of goals early on before flaming out. The avid Super Eagles watcher is left itching for a replacement that will be worthy of the name.

To recall the exploits of Yekini is to lament the disappearance of the footballing age in Nigeria that he and members of his generation illuminated. A once vibrant local league is now a painful shadow of its former self, while the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), notoriously incapable of balancing its own books, is more or less a gallery of misfits without any interest in the future of the game.

Were he alive, Yekini would have been 60 this year. We pay this special posthumous tribute to him in the hope that those in charge of football in our country might be roused by the power of his example. But knowing what we know, we are not lighting a candle.

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