At the start of every domestic football season in the country prior to 2015, the collective prayer of all Akwa United faithful was for a season-long divine intervention to help their loving club, which was established in 1996 with the promise of ruling over Nigeria’s domestic football, win the battle against relegation.
In those nineteen dark years the overwhelming season’s ambition of Akwa United was to strive to remain in the elite division, or whichever division of Nigerian league football they found themselves.
In the midst of mounting opposition due to growing awareness about the round-leather game across the country, past administrations and stakeholders made several efforts to keep the promise but such efforts somehow fell short of that which was required.
Although Akwa United got relegated and promoted on two notable occasions, the efforts of past administrations must, however, be acknowledged.
The Professor Christopher Ekong era gave birth to the club, the Obong Isong Isang era brought some stability to the team while the Akparawa Nse Ubeh era signalled the tipping point from what used to be to that which was to come.
Therefore when in November 2015, only six months into the first term of the present state administration, Akwa United defeated Lobi Stars in the final of the men’s Federation Cup at Teslim Balogun stadium, Lagos, to win a first national trophy since their establishment and Akwa Ibom’s first major football trophy twenty-eight years after her creation, there was a sense of uncertainty hanging over what the future portended.
That uncertainty was stemmed from the notion that although they were triumphant in the six-stage knockout competition, the Promise Keepers, as Akwa United have come to be called, were at sixes and sevens where their league performance was concerned.
That year, Akwa United benefitted from favourable final-day results elsewhere to retain their elite division status.
Whereas the 2015 success, which was quickly followed by the winning of the Nigerian Super Cup and the end-of-season Super-4 tournament, gave the state a first-ever taste of continental football and was a clear indication of the midas touch which Governor Udom Emmanuel had brought along with him to the Hilltop Mansion but there were still too many imponderables to address if Akwa United were truly going to be taken seriously in the Nigerian football scheme of things. For one it was not befitting and completely antipathetic for cup champions to be perennial relegation strugglers any where in world football. To fix that, the Governor realized that a lot still needed to be done and he swung into prompt action.
One of the first masterstrokes Governor Emmanuel deployed was the re-appointment of the result-driven Sir Monday Uko as Commissioner for Youth and Sports. The vastly experienced sports administrator who had successfully learnt the ropes of Nigerian league football in the dying years of the previous administration wasted no time in picking up from where he left off.
That continuity ensured that no administrative lacuna was created in the club’s affairs and neither salaries nor welfare packages were owed players and officials due to the overcoming of the red tape process of administrative transition.
Second, the increase in the financial allocation of Akwa United and the unbundling of the same from an annual affair to a prompt and sure-footed monthly obligation was a game-changer. As a result of this move, some of the best footballers in the country’s domestic game dared to transfer their services to a club that was previously feared for their notoriety when it came to the accumulation of salary arrears.
Third, the internationally-celebrated sports administrator and FIFA/CAF match commissioner, elder Paul Bassey, was appointed Chairman of Akwa United to pilot the affairs of the team. Although he played one peripheral role or the other in all of the club’s past administrations but that appointment put him directly in charge of the making of decisions and policies. As a veteran journalist who grew accustomed to the constructive questioning of some football policies of the country it was easy for “Etubom PB” to immediately make wholesale administrative changes at the club.
Unfortunately since the success of football in our clime is mainly measured by on-the-field results it was difficult to notice the remodelling of the Akwa United club house, the increase in salaries and welfare packages of players and staff members and the total re-organization of the club’s marketing unit to conform with the demands of the twenty-first century that the Paul Bassey era had already brought to bear which ultimately culminated in the winning of the men’s Aiteo Cup, as the Nigeria Federation Cup has come to be called, in 2017.
Akwa United’s recent successes are not unconnected with Governor Udom Emmanuel’s consistent penchant to reward excellence. The Governor did not rest on his laurels after rewarding all the players and officials of the 2015 Akwa United class with a two-bedroom apartment and the sum of two million Naira each but spurred them even further on with a reward of seventy million Naira for their 2017 success. If this does not motivate a team one wonders what does.
At the start of the just concluded 2020/2021 season, having successfully laid hands on the Federation Cup on two occasions, Akwa United had eyes on the ultimate prize, the Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) title.
As the renowned English Christian evangelist and author, Leonard Ravenhill once said, “The opportunity of a lifetime needs to be seized during the lifetime of that opportunity”, Akwa United realized that if the promise of ruling over the country’s domestic game was to be kept it was only befitting for it to be done during the lifetime of the administration of Governor Emmanuel who has virtually spared no resources to ensure their success and who was almost certainly going to reward them when they did.
The only God who rules over the affairs of men must be given His pride of place in this success story.
It was a tumultuous thirty-eight-game season which was full of ups and downs but that same God caused them to keep pedaling on.
The story of their involvement in a ghastly automobile accident along Ezionye Expressway in Enugu, the losing of their top striker, Ndifreke Effiong to Lybian outfit Al Ahli Benghazi and combative midfielder Morice Chukwu to Rivers United as well as an early exit from the Aiteo Cup did not cause them to derail from God’s promise for them this campaign.
That same God played Himself out again when FC Ifeanyi Ubah equalized to make it 1-1 with two minutes left on the clock to deny the Promise Keepers a win that would have made them champions on the foreign soil of Nnewi on match day thirty-six. But it was only befitting that they be crowned champions on the following match day inside the main bowl of a worthy nest which has now hatched so many proud champions and in front of their teeming fans whose support and love for the club transcend political, religious and ethnic barriers.
In the end, finishing off the season with seventy-one points from thirty-eight matches – the highest tally for any elite division team in the country’s domestic football history – and recording an unbeaten streak of eighteen matches in between – the longest any team has ever gone in the premier league era – means that Akwa United have not only kept the promise but they have done so in some astonishing style.
It must also have been the will of that same God that the joint top scorer and the goalkeeper with the highest-ever Nigerian top flight tally of sixteen clean sheets be members of the history-making Akwa United side.
With one Nigeria Professional Football League title, two Federation Cup titles, one Nigeria National League title (with Dakkada FC), one Nigerian Super Cup title and one Super-4 title already under its belt, one wonders what else the Governor Udom Emmanuel administration may have in store for us especially now that continental football in Africa has once again come calling.
