By Okpani Nkama (Jnr)
Obviously, Chukwu left great footprints in Football that qualified him not just a prince, but the king himself whose death should make the African heavens, nay, the entire world soccer heavens to blaze forth not just stars and comets, but glowering meteors of honour as was seen on the passages of DIOGO JOTA, and some of those contemporaries of his in Europe and America.
Some the contemporaries in question here for the records and referencing include Johan Cruyff. In 2016, when Cruyff passed on at 68, the Dutch heavens, and the entire European skies blazed and flared comets and shooting stars of honour for weeks for him. On the other hand, you can trust the Germans and their lofty sense of supremacy in all they do. Just last year, on January 07, 2024, Franz Anton Beckenbauer passed on at 78, the German heavens flared and flamed supreme honours for the iconic Emperor of the German Soccer glory.
Coincidently, Mario Jorge Lobo Zagallo also died on January 05, 2024, at 92 in Brazil, abode of the gods and Oracles of Soccer. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva quickly declared three days of national mourning in honour of the high priest and Erebus of Brazil’s soccer world. As expected, the heavens of the Soccer Samba land beamed grand meteors of temporal veneration and festivities for days and weeks. The sapphire of honours simmered across the Caribbean and the entire southern subcontinent of the American world.
If Chukwu’s contemporaries and young Diogo Jota of yesterday were all so honoured, would it not amount to a double death for Chukwu and the other two Super stars lying in the morgue with him to be denied similar honours. Therefore, let the African soccer heavens blaze for them!
I witnessed a little argument at a vendors stand in Enugu. Sadly, I must say, it was most displeasing to me to here apologists and die-hard fanatics of European football and denigrators of their own, vehemently insisted that their tears were more for young Jota who perished hail and hearty in auto crash at the prime of his life and career than for our own heroes. Reason! Peter Rufai, Christian Chukwu, and Pa Monday Sinclair were already spent and expired before their deaths. Were they? Was Rufai who died in his early 60s expired? Is the age factor really the issue here? I say No! After all, death is a blind gardener that reaps blindly. Everyone would die at his or her divinely appointed age.
Advancing to a sexagenarian shouldn’t be seen as advancing to automatic qualification for passing away. It is not! As a matter of fact, 60 plus is not at all a senile age for any healthy man with appropriate care. Accept or riot with this! Is it not at plus 60s, that our fathers and grand fathers, took their third or fourth young wives and victoriously scored braces and hatricks that produced exponential increases in their family sizes? Some of us are products and laurels of those feats.
What indeed is an issue here is the cause of their deaths. From available records, both Chukwu, Rufai, and Pa Sinclair all died of protracted illness. What does that tell us? Apparently, in our clime, protracted illness has become a killer syndrome and a plague. No one, young or old, retired or still in active public service or private practice, is insulated from protracted illness. Nevertheless, senior citizens, including our iconic legends of the sporting world and thespians of the entertainment industry, are more susceptible and vulnerable.
Not even presidential agbabollas (juggernauts), with jumbo means and opportunities, are beyond protracted illness. Otherwise, late serene president Umaru Musa Yaradua and the gangling Daura General, President Muhammadu Buhari, wouldn’t have been victims. Both bowed to the protracted illness syndrome on May 05, 2010, and Sunday, July 13, 2025, respectively.
However, the fate of these former presidents was more of destiny calls than of neglect and penury that have been the common causes of death by protracted illness for the common man. At times, one wonders if the spike in protracted illness as a plaque is not a requite for our reprehensible docility. Otherwise, how could the world’s largest single black nation be reduced to a failing savage kingdom where oddities and taboos rule without consequences? Curiously, this state capture is by an insignificant number of her citizens constituting its roguish ruling powers that be.
It’s quite curious how over 200 million people not only submit, but hail, and defend this micro percentage of reprobate men and women. Characters of vile pedigrees and wilful tendencies as their lords and Kings? And without guile or compunction, these insignificant percentages of the mega population are feeding the people full measures of the repercussions of generic servility and servitude. With the raging decapitating economic policies and spiteful rapacious rascality of these dragons of power, surviving each day in the land is a daily miracle, with the jungle reflexes of survival of the fittest formalised to a new normal.
As a matter of fact, the mega millions of Nigerian masses have confounded the world with a feat fit for an entry in the Guinness Book of Records with their uncommon endurance, equanimity and docility, at the face of unparalleled level of prevalent penury and debilitating decrepitude that have substantially reduced them to walking ghosts and living deads. What else could be more bizarre and apocalyptic for a people and indeed, all mankind than the ignominious absurdity of elevating the value and life of cattle (nama) over and above the sacrosancy and sanctity of human life as seen in this land Nigeria today.
With the wind of the 2027 power gamble looming eeriely like a dangling fireball over the land, it’s all forlorn hope in the horizon as more shegge and perilous times are loading for the deepening docility and imbecilty of the Nigerian masses.
For the retired ordinary elderly folks of the land, it’s double jeopardy. The zero welfare of the federal and state governments, the self-serving and thieving ways of public officials and the culture of indifference and calousness of citizens including family members of these retired senior citizens have substantially reduced them to endangered generation of expired expendables. In most cases, their horrifying plight is not really about the age factor, but the criminal neglect and shameful abandonment. The situation where routine medical check up for them becomes unaffordable luxury simply protracts and render ordinarily curable afflictions that befall them fatalistic.
After serving and defending the name, honour, and prestige of the nation with their youth and talents, they are unpatriotically reduced to living and dying beggars and paupers. The heavens don’t blaze forth their passages. It rather blinks enough sorrow and sarcasm at their Paupers burial.
What is even most disheartening is that even in their death, when the final whistle blows for the sporting legend and the end curtain falls for the entertainment icon, no profound respite comes their way. The run of shabby treatment and resentment persists posthumously for them. After the rains and rivers of public crocodile tears, reverberating echoes of hypocritical eulogies, and vain promises from the disembling ruling powers on their days of dust-to-dust, begins the misery eternal for their immediate families and survivors.
In the case of Chairman-Chukwu, the misery would have long begun, if not for golden hearted Femi Otedola, who came to his initial rescue, funding his medical treatment abroad. Similarly, it was the noble man of God, Pastor Tunde Bakare, that lent a leaning shoulder to Peter Rufai.
For Pa Sinclair, his friends and mentees rallied, albeit late, to raise over 30 million Naira for his upkeep.
Now, if our continental heavens fail to blaze forth for our fallen patriots as the European world and other civilized climes do, what about our national and regional football worlds?
Ndigbo would say; “ùzù anamaghi ákpù Ógéné léé égbé ányá n’ òdù.” Meaning, _ A black smith that is poor in the art of making the gung, should take a good look at the tail of the kite.”_
This is to say; our governments and officials should quit playing politics with the rights and entitlements of the people by borrowing a leaf from the global tintanabulation of honour and celebration staged for Jota who died same day our own Peter Rufai died?
Perhaps, could this may be expecting too much from the Nigerian State for a national Icon of Igbo extraction? Take or leave it! It’s an established common reality that since Biafra to date, anything about Onyi Igbo or Ndigbo from the Nigerian state is usually treated with unguised spite and bias.
What good and pleasant news it will be to see the federal government through the Sports Ministry and Commission prove this assertion wrong with positive precedence on the burial of Christian Chukwu scheduled for August 16, 2025.
What a pleasant manifestation of the renewed hope mantra it would be to see the federal government doing more than the usual raising of a burial Committee/delegation of officials whose self serving activities in most cases portray as (Ndi ònyá ákpá éli ózú) undertakers of fortune who make merchandise of the sorrows of the bereaved. Those who grace funerals not to earnestly mourn with the people but to invidiously procure political fortunes from the sombre gathering.
For Ndigbo, Chukwu was by all means much of a pride of the East, as he was of the nation and Africa. Therefore, Ndigbo all over the world should rise in the tradtional communal Igbo spirit of (ónyé ághálá nwánné yá) be your brother’s keeper to show the world the collective gratitude and appreciation of Ndigbo for the eternal honour and joy Chukwuemeka brought to the Igbo race through his superlative sporting skills as a world class footballer.
All eyes are on you, our South East Governors. It’s our hope and prayer that you’d break the convention of watching indifferently and aloof while waiting with the malevolent silence and patience of the vulture. We expect your Excellencies to come together and lead the charge of showcasing the inviolate Igbo tradition of according lofty honours to a deserving Dike and Odogwu this football field marshal represented.
And to Enugu state, Chukwu’s home state, the honour and glory of Chukwu and the indomitable Rangers International FC, Chukwu spent his youth and talents leading, are all with you. You can’t afford to disappoint Ndigbo and the nation as the world would be gathering in the state for your son’s final journey to joining his ancestors.
With the burial day fast approaching, I must confess that my initial apprehension has happily begun to fade into excitement. This is based on the impressive pace of execution of the Executive Governor’s promises which included renovation of Chukwu’s decrepit country home, and roads leading to Obe, Chukwu’s hometown, in Nkanu West LG. This is more than the usual desperate face saving measures to cover the collective shame of neglect and humiliation the world-class football icon suffered, especially while alive, battling with his protracted health challenges.
One can earnestly say bravo to Governor Peter Mba, himself, an Nkanu man, famed for lofty projects delivery in his strides in digital governance. The good people of Obe and indeed the entire Nkanu land is happy and grateful!
This empathic stride to honour Chukwu albeit posthumously strikes a rhythm with the same empathic homage the all time charismatic old Governor of old Anambra state, Chief Jim Ifanyichukwu Nwobodo paid to the surviving foundation star of Rangers International FC of Enugu, Emma Okala in his home.
Also, as did the Abia State Governor Alex Otti, when he hosted the 75th birthday of Chief ZEBRUDAYA June 10, 2025 at Umuahia. His choosing to celebrate Chief Chika Okpala, the Chief ZEBRUDAYA Okoroigwe Nwogbo, with CLARUS MGBOJIKWE, Rev Davis Offor, who is now 83 and visually impaired, sent a resounding message that the values and contributions of these TV thespians to society were not totally lost to Government and people of Abia and by extension Ndigbo and the nation.
Showing such love and care to these great stars while they are alive is by all means better than any level of posthumous honours. This is essentially because in these deep words of Dr. Jalarth Uche Opara, death shouldn’t be;
“A platform to squeeze out empathy and sympathy one was too stingy to release, when they come, begging, crying, and truckling for help. Death isn’t a platform to recount in a most flowery manner the life and times of the deceased, which nobody cared to whisper to them while they were alive. Falling now on deaf ears, on closed eyes, and on cold body, relishing none, for such is at best water on the back of the duck.”
NZE OKPANI NKAMA JNR.* (Man of History), is a professional writer, poet, author and multiple Award winning broadcast Journalist. *0706 542 4087
