Today while i was going through my house thoroughly in cleaning, i found this amazing picture of me involving in sporting activities,. This picture was taken 2005 while participating in a five aside football competition in Ifa Atai, you can see me squatting with the ball in front.
This particular football competition was not organize in my community, i was invited by my very close friend to joined his team in the competition. It was not actually a competition organized by any community but it was organized yearly by an NGO organization in my friends area so he always invite me to participate as part of his team member knowing what i can do with my leg.
Emmanuel my very good friend, standing in the middle was a very good player and the brother standing at the far end right was also good in football, and i too was good, the guy squatting with me also was a good player even the guy with that red scarf on his head was also too good a player. So with this squad we dominated the competition for more than four years until the guys within the village started a conspiracy against us. Emmanuel my friend who is the coordinator of our team is not from the host community, he was just a tenant, so since it was not a community football anybody can get the form and register he always register us in the competition yearly.
We had a smooth run in the competition for about four years, this was the competition that first showcase us on our state news paper, the NGO organization always publicize the winner on the pioneer news paper yearly. but on the fifth year while becoming winners again, the village didn't take it kindly with us, they was a serious riot, they hijack the trophy and run, scattered everything there, saying that we cannot be winning every year without allowing other teams to win, they even accuse us of using charm to play football, it was a serious show. But by the grace of God all of us ran back home with our life intact, the worst was that no member of our team was from that community, we were all invited by our friend.
That was how we stop participating in that competition which later ended a year after. The NGO later called us and give us the money that we were supposed to go back home with that day and also apologize for the incident, they add some more money for us for our treatment from the riot because some of us sustain injury from their beatings. Apart from the one i experience in my secondary school shell cup competition which school versus school will be fighting when there lost to each other which was the main reason why shell cup competition has to stop because it used to be war, these was my second time experiencing riot in football competition.
It was indeed a horrible experience,although we attracted interest from other sport community because of our performance, most especially the publicity on the news paper, but the last years competition was not something to write home about.