“There was weeping, wailing, mourning and gnashing of teeth in Asaba on Sunday when a 911 lorry brought corpses of seven persons who died when the Delta Line bus that was bringing back players of Asabatex “A” Pros Football Club from Port-Harcourt to Asaba, had a head-on collision with a trailer on Saturday night.”
– See Sam Ijeh, The Pointer, Feb. 6, 1977
The accident, which occurred at about 8pm between Okija and Ozubulu in Anambra State, claimed the lives of Tajudeen Amuda, a final year business administration student at the Federal Polytechnic, Oko, who was supposed to have returned to school on Sunday, Onono Edwin, Audu Baba Black, Obi Ogbogu, John, Obiora, and Mr. Maduemezia, driver of the ill-fated bus.
According to a survivor of the crash, Mr. Joshua Iweboka, they left Port-Harcourt at about 4.50pm when they were informed that their encounter with Sharks FC of the Garden City would not hold because of the on-going Division 1 Pro-league.
On a very large and sophisticated arrangement, First Division club football in the advanced countries of Europe, Southern America and the Arab world is big business.
Consequently, it becomes a life objective of the First Division clubs to remain there and the lower placed clubs do everything to get promoted. It follows that the players in these clubs receive palace treatment with strings of unaccountable allowances. Their salaries have no levels and when negotiated, payment is prompt. Somewhere in Africa, beside the River Niger, a young Nigerian football club sprouted and built up just from nothing and made a dramatic entry into the premier division of Black Africa’s busiest playing league in 1975. Within that period Asabatex had won the prestigious Bendel Challenge cup battered the Enugu Rangers, scarred the IICC shooting stars of Ibadan, and courtesy of the Nigerian press became known as the Giant Killers FC of Bendel.
Consequently, in 1977, a headline of Times Sport (Biggest at the Best) of Daily Times Wednesday April, 1977, ran “Chukwu 17 others Recalled”. The Times reported that “Thompson Usiyan, George Hassan, Peter Okonji, Bendict Okocha and Sackey Hans (ASABATEX)-were invited to the Green Eagles Camp. Also see Lanre Lawal (Punch April 27, 1977) “the prospective Eagles drawn largely from Bendel, Ogun, and Kano states are George Hassan, Peter Okonji, Benedict “Acid” Okocha, Sackey Hansan are all from Asabatex.” The saga and the rumba dance of Asabatex in and out of the First Division is now history. All the same, what perplexed football analysts in this country was the sudden fall from grace to grass of Asabatex in the closing rounds of the National League of 1981 and their continued decline. We are now saying farewell to that club from the First Division because, since the inception of that club, they have continued to be on the receiving end of an unappreciative state government with a grudging managerial sponsorship and barren home support. (See Okocha’s Asabatex leads the National League table Concord, Saturday August 23, 1980).
Great Nigerian sides look for big money before inception. With the big money of a generous tycoon behind the team, they can afford to attract the established stars from other football clubs and possibly retain their own players. Nigerian clubsides aiming for a place in the First Division, by the large, “must” win all their home matches. General fluctuations in the textile industry arising from unrestrained importation of foreign materials have kept very few textile industries alive in the country. Also see SATELLITE, where an honourable member of the Bendel House of Assembly, Dr. G. Amantu, requested N15 million from the Federal Government for the reactivation of the Asabatex mills.
Countrymen believe it that year Asabatex played nearly all their first round matches without their salaries. It was later that a philanthropic organisation, the Falcom Club of Asaba, decided to pay off two months’ salaries, and also provided them with a Coaster bus.
Towards the end of the round, the players had lost all psychological power and had been psyched out from the game with their inability to keep their homes, house rents, etc. No wonder they plummeted from the first to the 2nd Division.
The chequered, flourishing and declining history of unforgettable Asabatex FC represents the ever-griefing position of the Asaba Anioma Igbos in the Nigerian federation. If they are not debauched minorities helmed in by inconsiderate minorities, how come that when the champions of minority rights, Chief Edwin Clark and Chief David Dafinone, were the chairmen of the Asaba Textile Mills, their deliberate anti-workers and anti-base community policies suffocated the mills? Osadebay was the first and the last Premier of the Midwest who, in his spread-out fairness, established the Glass Inndustry in Ughelli, the Asabatex and the Cement Industry at Ukpilla. Ukpilla is alive, the Ughelli Industry is flourishing but it was my friend Emmanuel Uduaghan who finally sold off the only government industry in Anioma.
The return of Asabatex at this time is symbolic and, apart from the spirits who are praying for justice and fair play to be extended to this particular people, Asaba is the only capital in Nigeria that has no university, no polytechnic, no teaching hospital!! Recently, Ughelli FC, Isoko United, and the Evergreen Warri Wolves all gulped from the state millions of naira to play football; some coxcombs argued that Delta Force FC, which is a hybrid collection of all-comers, is an Asaba team. Delta Force FC is the top club of the state and by the constitution of its players and officials, anybody who says the team is Asaba-based is reasoning from his anus.
Like Thompson Usiyan in the ’80s, E. Otuke, Goalkeeper Tare, Delta University’s Festus Otuke, Captain Happy Akaraiwe, and Asabatex FC Coach Blankson, all may have come this far as a result of their angst, for their rejected talents. Today, at Asaba Stadium, the God of Soccer will give it to the team in red.
In remembrance of the fallen innocents. In solidarity with the famished people. For me, after over 20 years, I return to my stadium in triumph and whatever will be the result after today’s finals, we have established a veritable football squad on the Niger.