CHAIRMAN Christian Chukwu was an institution when the word had a delightful meaning. His towering presence in Nigerian football survived the enduring forgetfulness that attends sports. We should be grateful to have had him for this long.
His passing on 12 April 2025 at 74, shocked many who had worried over his health in the past six years. He improved vastly after billionaire Femi Otedola’s $50,000 intervention paid for Chukwu’s surgery in a London hospital in April 2019. He was eternally grateful to Otedola who he described in very glowing terms for the assistance.
The Chukwu we mourn today would have died almost 31 years ago in an air crash in which three crew members and two players died. He was the Technical Adviser of Iwuanyanwu Nationale which was on its way home from an African Champions League quarter-final tie against Esperance Sportive of Tunisia.
The crash in Tamanrasset, in southern Algeria, on 18 September 1994, was blamed on poor weather. The pilot wanted to refuel in Tamanrasset and crashed off the runway. The chartered Oriental Airline flight BAC 1-11broke in three parts, on impact, was out of fuel. Chukwu was among those who came out of it with barely a scratch.
My encounter with Chukwu on an October night in 1979 marked the beginning of a relationship that ran until his passing. Enugu Rangers and Sharks of Port Harcourt had played a match, at the National Stadium, to commemorate 20 years of television in Africa.
For no reason in particular, I headed towards the National Institute for Sports within the stadium. Its hostel then was better kept than most great hotels in Lagos.
He was standing there, perhaps, waiting for someone. The serendipity of the meeting, and the suddeness of standing feet away from a folk hero, I still remember. I was star-struck. I introduced myself as a reporter from The Punch and enquired about how he was faring. I still did not believe I was talking to someone I so admired from afar that I never envisaged encountering him.
An interview would have been my privilege, I intoned, but I suggested he needed to rest after the game. Did I even know what to ask? The big bosses reported football then.
Chukwu encouraged me to go ahead with the interview. I said it could wait. He told me that it would be a long wait.
It was in explaining the “long wait” that he dropped the hint that the Green Eagles were travelling that night to Brazil to commence preparations for the 1980 Africa Cup of Nation and would not be back until late February.
He had gifted me an exclusive story.
I was not to see him again until 1984, at Ikeja airport. Rangers were heading to Lome for an African Cup Winners Cup contest against OC Agaza of Togo. I was reporting the game for The Guardian. My boss Sunny Ojeagbase gave me a note which I lost in the melee that ruled the airport then. The note was to introduce me to Chukwu. He shook his head at how ridiculous it was that Sunny was introducing us.
I was shocked that he remembered me. Weeks after the Green Eagles left for Brazil, I headed to school until 1983.
We shared Chukwu’s accommodation in Lome and spent most of the night discussing how challenging matches in the league would be with the breath of the country and poor infrastructure. His humility, humour, and friendliness were genuine.
He further stunned me by giving me the Rangers team list as I left to the stadium. You should not get to the stadium to ask for the same list that was compiled in the room you spent the night, he told me.
Chukwu was a gentleman on and off the pitch, drawing friends to himself by his generous spirits to colleagues and those who came his way. He was the centre of the humour mill when with friends. In public, he was almost shy.
You could hardly get him to say anything unless he wanted to. I often asked him to confirm some of the stories that issued from the camps. One was his preference to pair with Godwin Odiye in central defence instead of Abubakar of Raccah Rovers of Kano, Emmanuel Okala’s choice.
Okala reportedly chose Abubakar for a game. In the course of the argument, Chukwu told Okala, “As an Igbo man, I’ll not deceive you”. Okala retorted, “This is not an Igbo matter. This is football matter. Let Abubakar play”. Abubakar played. The Kano player still answers Let Abubakar Play.
The other was on the second leg of the 1977 Cup Winners Cup semi-final which was played in Kaduna. IICC Shooting Stars, with their dazzling forward Segun Odegbami, had total dominance of the game though Rangers won on penalty shoot-out.
Okala at half-time was mad with Chukwu and wondered why he could not mark Odegbami.
“Odegbami is tough. If you wait for him on the right, he appears on the left. If you wait on the left he moves to the right. If you expect him at the centre, he simply disappears.”
Chukwu asked me from where we heard the stories. That was his only answer. But he could be blunt when Rangers’ tactics, in his days, which mainly consisted of Okala’s long kicks, and the long thrown-ins, were criticised.
A reporter once asked him why Rangers tended to play without the midfield. He retorted, “Did you see any goalpost in the midfield?”.
His team mates respected and loved him. Francis Monidafe, based in US, made a trip in April 2021 to Enugu to see Chukwu as he recovered from surgery.
Chukwu was more than a leader. Football was a totem of his leadership. Nigeria saw a great footballer. We saw a great leader around who we, in the East, wrapped our hopes coming out of the Civil War. We survived the war. It was important that we survived the peace.
From leading the East Central State Academicals to winning the Manuwa Cup and walking into Rangers, Chukwu took such emphatic charge that he became Rangers, Eagles, working with some of the most talented footballers that have graced Africa.
He carried a people’s hope. He did not disappoint us. Rangers was not just a football team. It was the new source of joy for a new beginning after the war. Chukwu led a different war and acquitted himself well.
As the trophies and honours started rolling in, Rangers appeared invincible. Those days are well behind us, yet people remember Chairman who remained a rallying point for his team mates.
It was while seeing Chukwu in Enugu that I met Dr. Johnny Egbuonu, who played for the Green Eagles while in secondary school, “school boy international”.
Chukwu in his years in Green Eagles – 1974 to 1981 – won these honours: bronze medals at the Africa Cup of Nations, 1976, 1978; All-Africa Games, silver medal, 1978; and the 1980 Africa Cup of Nations.
He was assistant to Sebastian Broderick when Nigeria won the inaugural FIFA U-16 World Cup in 1985. He was also Dutchman Clemens Westerhof’s assistant when the Super Eagles won the Nations Cup title in 1994. He managed a Lebanese team Safa FC in 1997 and the Kenyan national team in 1998.
Chukwu led the Super Eagles to a third place finish at the 2004 Nations Cup. He lost the job in 2005. The Nigeria Football Federation has owed $128,000, from unpaid salaries since then. He said so in an interview last year.
NFF quickly denied owing Chukwu even a dime, when 1980 Nations Cup team mate Adokiye Amiesimaka reminded NFF that it owed Chukwu hence its tears at his passing were sheer hypocrisy.
On his 70th birthday in January 2021 Chukwu’s friend, team mate and Green Eagles vice captain, Segun Odegbami hosted a live television broadcast in which players, young and old across Africa, journalists, and officials, celebrated Chukwu. Among the politicians who participated were Peter Obi and Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe.
Whatever fate Chukwu suffered after serving Nigeria is not different from the country’s dedication to ensuring that it distances itself from the line, in our former national anthem, “the labour of our heroes past shall never be in vain”. The more damning fallacy in that line is that even the labour of our “present heroes” is in vain too.
Farewell thee well Chairman Christian Chukwu, my brother, my friend. You led us well. May the Almighty grant you rest.
