The Sun News On-line

Super Eagles’ captain and Portsmouth of England attacker, Nwankwo Kanu was at the departure lounge of the Murtala Mohammed International Airport en route Abuja for the 2008 Beijing Olympic football qualifying match between Nigeria and South Africa.

Kanu was headed for Abuja on the invitation of Coach Samson Siasia, who felt his presence would inspire the Dream Team IV to equal the feat of Dream Team I, which the leggy forward captained in 1996 at Atlanta to win the Olympic gold medal for Nigeria.

Kanu gave first-hand information from a major actor on what went wrong with the Super Eagles in Ghana at the Nations Cup 2008. He went on to tell some of the camp gist from Malaga, Spain, where the Super Eagles camped for the Ghana ’08.

A very good storyteller, Papillo as his fans love to call him said: “During one of our leisure hours in camp in Malaga, we talked about the weather there, the mischief of some teammates in camp and the newspaper reports on the Internet.” Then as though something snapped him, he turned to the story of an encounter with a board member of the NFA, who was on the trip with the squad.

His words: “There was this afternoon, we were all relaxing after lunch, about four of us in one corner, and this board member joined us. As the discussion moved from individual jokes to the style of Coach Vogts, the board member said he would like to tell us the story behind the hiring of the man. He said they never had plans of looking for another Oyibo coach because there was no money to pay them. He also told us that the last time they attempted to sign one was when Dr. Mike Adenuga of Globacom sponsored their trip to London to interview some foreign coaches like Phillipe Troussier. He said afterwards the NFA could not approach the man again because of some problems that arose over sponsorship with Globacom.

“So, we were thrilled in Malaga when information filtered in that the same Chairman of Globacom would be having breakfast with the team in Ghana. We have already heard of the man’s generosity, especially to players and for us, it was a breakfast we wanted to eat badly. My brother, we missed that breakfast, but I got a chance to speak with him privately during a short visit to our dressing room, and I can tell you the way he hugged me made up for all the other things I know he would have given us.”

The above testimony from the legendary Kanu is one of many told of the businessman, whose staff and friends call the ‘Great Guru’ as a mark of their respect for his entrepreneurial accomplishments. Back in 2002, Nigeria’s football lay prostrated with no sponsor for all the major competitions and the national teams.

The flagship competition, the Professional League, was abandoned two years earlier by the previous sponsor, and Nigerian players were migrating in droves even to small countries like Benin Republic, Togo and to far places like Nepal, Qatar, China etc. with hardly any football culture.

It was at this lowest ebb of football in Nigeria that Dr. Adenuga intervened, using his holding company, Vixen Enterprises, to breathe life into the dying game. The company emerged the Official Partner of the NFA and Official Sponsor of the Super Eagles and other national teams. Not a man for half measures, Dr. Adenuga reached out for the abandoned league, out-bidding three other firms, Nigerian Breweries, LG Electronics and NICON Insurance to emerge the title sponsor of the league. It was a record fee by African standards as the hitherto poorly funded league secured a four-year deal of over $2million in cash and another $.2million in equipment.

Football aficionados hailed the deal and yet were somehow worried that the league might not offer commensurate returns on the investment. Hon. Nduka Irabor, then a member of the House of Representatives and a close confidant of Adenuga, was to provide an insight to what brought the windfall to the league.

According to him, “Dr. Adenuga is not spending this huge fund on football in order to profit in anyway from it, he is someone who has followed and loved Nigerian football even while living in America. He will surprise most of us during conversations by naming the heroes of our football… names like Albert Onyeanwuna, Haruna Ilerika, Tony Igwe, Christian Chukwu, Segun Odegbami and the late Muda Lawal among many others.”

It’s very easy then to understand his personal interest and later investment in Nigerian players who were retained as brand ambassadors by his telecommunications conglomerate, Globacom. Again, he blazed the trail in touching the lives of individual players by offering them mouth-watering deals as endorsement fees.

A number of new generation Nigerian players have reaped from this generosity and the list includes Joseph Yobo, Yakubu Aiyegbeni, John Utaka, Julius Aghahowa, Osaze Odemwingie, John Mikel Obi and Obafemi Martins. It also extended to some of the older generation stars such as Odegbami and Chukwu, who were recruited as Brand Ambassadors and featured in some of Globacom’s epic advertisements.

According to a staff of Globacom, a strong case was once made to reduce the number of the Glo Stars, but the Great Guru will not take any of such recommendations. He was said to have remarked: “I am looking beyond these players in paying them as Glo Ambassadors. I am satisfied that through them, I am touching lives because they have relations, friends and even people they do not know who benefit from the fees they earn.” Another staff recalled an encounter between the Chairman and Yobo in his Victoria Island office shortly after Nigeria qualified for the 2004 Nations Cup.

“My Chairman requested to meet Yobo, who had just signed-on as Glo Star, and when we were ushered into his office, he rose and embraced the player, hailing him ‘Yobo Yobo! Yobo Yobo!’ shaking his hands several times and telling the young man how he’s fascinated by his game. When we departed, Yobo, whose wallet grew fatter with American dollars exclaimed that he never expected the man to know him, not to talk of being his fan.”

In 2004, Dr. Adenuga was rewarded for his investment in the Nigerian League when Globacom Premier League champions, Enyimba International FC erased the jinxed record of Nigerian clubs in the African Champions League. In appreciation of the effort of the Aba Elephant, Dr. Adenuga organised a special reception for the team at the then newly commissioned Mike Adenuga Towers, doling out a whopping N30million to the players and officials. In the 2005 finals played at the Abuja National Stadium, he was among the over 60,000 fans that cheered Enyimba to a new record of being the first team to win the competition back-to-back.

He also personally attended a reception organised by the Abia State government for the team and rewarded each of the players with N.5million.
He once captured his passion for football in an address at the 2005 Glo-CAF Awards in Abuja in which he said: “My support for football is to empower the African youths and help them find expression for their natural talents, and in the process, secure their future. I also believe firmly that through football, Africans will forge greater unity, interact peacefully and define our relationships through our common passion.”

If there is any more searches for an eloquent testimony of this pursuit to drive the people’s empowerment through their passion, then consider the ‘crazy’ bid for the renewal of the rights to the Globacom Premier League in 2006. Dr. Adenuga has made the Nigerian Premier League the best-funded in Africa with a sponsorship fee of N4billion in four years.

“It is not possible on business grounds for any organisation to pay N693million for the league in Nigeria. I believe the chairman of Globacom is only doing this as an expression of his love for football and his passion to empower Nigerians,” mused Onochie Anibeze, sports editor of Vanguard newspaper shortly after the bid was unveiled in December 2006.

Crowned the Pillar of Football in Africa by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) in 2007 in Sudan, Dr. Mike Adenuga Jnr was born on April 29, 1953. His business empire spans banking, oil and gas, telecommunication, aviation and real estate. As he turns 55, we celebrate this worthy son of Africa, Nigeria’s No.1 football fan.