The first car I ever owned in my life was a Honda Civic, 2-door, sports car. It was Tomato-red in colour, sexy, beautiful. It looked like it was made specially for me when I drove it around Lagos and Ibadan, during my National Youth Service year when it came into my life.
This is how it happened.
It was one morning, early in 1977. I was a Youth Corper serving in Oyo State. I had been to the Olympic Games in Montreal, Canada and returned. I had become a regular member of the Green Eagles creating waves around the continent. I had been a part of the great Shooting Stars FC that won Nigeria’s first continental club football championship, the Africa Cup Winners Cup.
In short, by January of 1977, I was on the ascendancy as a major football superstar in Africa. That morning I went for training at the Liberty Stadium in Ibadan where Shooting Stars had resumed training after their historic victory in December of 1976.
I was a very young, and very famous at the time after that feat. Late Chief Olalekan Salami, my mentor and Chairman of Shooting Stars FC was standing next to this sports car in front of the main entrance to the state box section of the stadium. I prostrated for him in the usual Yoruba tradition of respecting elders, particularly Chief Salami, whose image and reputation loomed in Western Nigeria at the time, and was old enough to be my father anyway. Indeed, he was my adopted father.
He did not waste any time at all. The smile on his face spoke loudly that he had something up his sleeves. He pointed at the car. Everyone knew the car. It belonged to Chief Emiola Adesina. Chief asked if I liked it. What a question? This was the sexiest and most beautiful car in the world, as far as I was concerned. I loved it.
At that moment, Chief Emiola Adesina came out of the building to join us. Chief Adesina was a dashingly handsome, very urbane gentleman, Chief Salami’s bosom friend, Director of Sports of the Western State Sports Council, a UK-trained first-generation sports administrator. He was managing sports in the State as well as the magnificent World-Class sports complex that was the Liberty Stadium, and was also a part of the masterminds behind the evolution of one of the greatest football movements in Africa at that time – Shooting Stars International Football Club.
In a move that could have been planned (now that I think about it) Chief Salami told Chief Adesina that he was too old to be driving such a ‘debonair’ car, and that I just told him I loved the car. He told him to hand over the car key to me. I stood there staring at both gentlemen, dumb-founded.
Chief Salami pulled me aside and asked me how much money I could spare to buy the car.
I had just received a part of my bonus for winning the African Cup, and Chief Salami was aware of it. Chief was also aware that he deducted a paltry sum of money from the bonus to pay for a plot of land he insisted I bought from his personal estate behind Yejide Girls’ Grammar, Ibadan.
So, he knew how much I had left of the less than two thousand Naira bonus I was given.
Chief Emiola, with a smile still on his face, no discussion of any sort, brought out the key from his pocket and handed over to me. I was dreaming. I pinched myself. This was real.
That morning, after training, I drove my dream car away to start a new life as a car owner on the streets of Ibadan!
I don’t quite recall the details again, but later that week or so, I paid a paltry sum for the car.
Chief Emiola Adesina was very interested in me, and about how I managed to combine my football in Shooting Stars FC with my education at The Polytechnic, Ibadan. He had a passion for education. I was not surprised when, with his wife, they established a secondary school, named after his first daughter; Subuola Memorial College. When he retired from the civil service, he became a teacher for decades. The school is still one of the best private schools in Ibadan.
Chief Emiola Adesina, a High Chief in Ibadan, was a man of style and class, a complete gentleman, an astute administrator, honest, incorruptible, hardworking and integrity-personified! Between Chiefs Salami and Adesina, and with the support of the Governor of the State at the time, General David Jemibewon, they established what eventually became a rallying football club and movement for all Yoruba around Africa – Shooting Stars International.
Some two years ago, in Ibadan, I met him at a social function with his wife. They were both looking still agile and very well for their ages. Last week, I read on a social media platform that Chief Emiola Adesina died peacefully at 90!
I look back now and thank the Creator of the Universe for letting him be an active player in my early life.
