Enugu Rangers as the leading Nigerian clubside in their more than four decades of golden run have won the cup twice since 1976 and lost in the finals couple of times.
Emma Okocha
“Shooting Stars FC were more than a football club. It was a movement of the Yoruba people. After the war, the Igbos came back using Rangers International FC as their beacon; they said at that time that there was no victor! No vanquished! But everybody knew that was not true. The Igbos were not given the recognition of a people that were not conquered. So they used Rangers FC to tell Nigerians that though you have conquered us at the war front but, in football, we are the champions.”
– See Segun Odegbami, in RANGERS INTERNATIONAL FC, HISTORY OF A PEOPLE, EDWIN EZE, EMMA OKOCHA, GOM SLAM, ENUGU 2017
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In his own contributions, Sam Akpabot, professor of musicology, great Nigerian sports commentator who was teaching at the University of Ibadan, going further from Odegbami’s preface on Rangers International FC’s history, went for the statistics and in the same book detailed for the records “the story of the Enugu Rangers who got into the finals of the Challenge Cup (now FA Cup) just a year after a dreadful Civil War, which brought so much destruction to lives and property in the eastern states of the country, where Enugu was the capital. One year after the end of the war in 1970, the people of Enugu and its surroundings were able to get together a team of ageing players mixed with up-and-coming young men to challenge for the cup and they just lost by 2-1 to WNDC of Ibadan. They then embarked on all-intensive training schedule and recruitment drive and came back to win the cup three years in a row in 1974, 1975 and 1976, to join Ibadan as the only two teams to achieve this feat.”
Enugu Rangers as the leading Nigerian clubside in their more than four decades of golden run have won the cup twice since 1976 and lost in the finals couple of times. Unlike the Rangers, the Kano Pillars do not carry on their necks the intimidating diadems and records splashed by the Rangers International. With nothing to protect or lose, the Pillars are dangerous any day they collide with the Rangers.
I remember in those days when Jim Nwobodo was the governor at Enugu and the not-very-educated Governor Barkin Zuwo was the governor in Kano. It was a Division 1 match and the Rangers had arrived Kano to play the Pillars in 1983. From nowhere, the hosts scored before half time.
At the blast of the second half, the governor had phoned P.O.C Achebe, Enugu Rangers’ secretary, “You must win that match, or don’t come back to Enugu!”
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Remember Barkin Zuwo, the famous governor who, on answering reporter’s question on Kano’s mineral deposits, had claimed that Kano had plenty of Fanta and Coke!! Barkin Zuwo had beaten Abubakar Rimi, Jim Nwobodo’s friend and NPP governorship candidate, to win as PRP candidate.
Five minutes into the resumption, the Pillars goalkeeper was unable to continue. His hands were in bloody blisters and he was carried off the pitch. His right fullback was out and out! Osigwe’s thunder released outside the eighteen landed on his solar plexus, took him on vertical flight before he landed with a thud.
“Watch me Ngadi,” the Rangers’ adventurous No. 9 in the last seconds of that five minutes to resumption, had as usual curved in from the right, outrunning all; and was about to release his own cannon when the whistle was blown by the governor. From the VIP Lounge Barkin Zuwo sacked the Referee Banza, these Yamiris (…unprintables)… go kill my Pillar boys!
That was the first time in my years of playing top-class football matches and reporting the same, the a match would end within the 50th minute and the result of that encounter stood! Since then, Kano Pillars have beaten Rangers home and away and have also lost to the Rangers.
Whatever, with a Yoruba coach and a Deltan as its team manager, the Rangers I saw at their last training match were in mad top form. The Pillars will be dismantled in my stadium.
For me, this is the first time I am going into this Asaba Stadium, since my sad departure as the Delta Director of Sports in 1997. It is an irony of fate that this stadium, bigger than Ogbe Stadium and Warri Stadium, had been deliberately left fallow by subsequent administrations. Asaba as the capital would not have a stadium. No football club, even though before the state was created it had the great Asabatex FC. Asaba would not have any university like every other capital in Nigeria? As the boss at the Sports Council, I stood my ground and told those tribal phalangists to go to hell. I was going to play my Challenge Cup Finals in Asaba and not in Warri! Let the heavens fall and the full story is out in Emma Okocha’s Nigeria’s Sports Policy and the Supremacy of Delta Sports.
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Thank you Ekwueme, Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, returning to the people the game that was taken away from here. Nigeria has a lot to gain, for since Papa Azinge who played for UAC in 1924, Anioma had always produced the finest Nigerian footballers of all time. Hamilton, Victor Oduah, the four Aniekes, the three Odilis, Okwufuleze, Bastic Uwaechie, Augustine Ofokwu, Dr. Oganwu, Ikedi Agali, the Okocha brothers both in Asaba and from Ogwashi Ukwu, Sunday Oliseh and Stephen Keshi. In his wisdom, he has established the Ughelli Stars, rejuvenated the Warri Wolves and made Ozoro the Olympic training ground for our future Olympians.