Image
Nostalgic
Nostalgic feeling is one that each and everyone must experience. Not matter how good or bad the event was, there is one thing that tend to draw our attention back to those things that happened in time past. Even though some of these feeling are what we always cherish, some we don’t what to remember there at all.
While coming back from work today, we were stuck in traffic caused by two men who were fighting ego war. One had used the right side of the road to doge a pot hole on his part but unfortunately another car from the opposite direction was almost at the spot. The fight was for man to move back since it wasn’t his lane for the second car to pass but he insisted that the second saw him and could have exercise patience for him to pass. So, none of the cars wanted to move at all thereby causing a grid lock. That funny
Thinking on what to write right in the cab, I asked my friend what was funniest lie he was told at childhood. After waiting for some seconds he told me about how he was told that the world governing football body (not FIFFA) had band India from participating in international football tournaments because they scored Nigeria 99-1.
Nigeria Vs India
.
The story had it that in the 1990’s Nigeria had a football match with India. India being notorious with black magic vowed that the Nigerian parading notable football starts like Samuel Okwaraji will not see a goal in that match. This was very surprising seeing that India was not a strong football opponent.
The day slated for the match came and the game started. With seconds, the India teams had scored. One the Nigerian team passed the ball, the India boys will collect it immediately and score. They kept scoring according to their promise that the Nigeria team were 99-0 down.
One may begin to ask how that was possible in a football match meant for 90 minutes. Does it mean they were scoring every seconds of the game? Well, there is an answer to that which you wouldn’t want to believe but to the innocent mind at childhood we believe everything told by a senior.
The story had it that whenever the India team had the ball, the ball turn to big coconut, sometimes accompanied with burning fire which they can shoot from any part of the pitch to the net. The funniest thing was that, it was only the keeper who was seeing the ball as coconut with burning flame thereby running away from the post each time the ball arrived the net. Some version of the story said that the Indian team could hold the ball in the air to the post while the Nigerian team stood and observed while other version said that the India team were in two batches, the 11 men on the pitch always gave another 11 men in the air the ball to be score.
How Nigeria Scored
Break the jinx, the Nigerian team needed only goal to win and so started devising means to get a lone goal. The goal actually did come just at the nick of the end of the final extract time when a Nigeria player called Samuel Okwaraji with the ball just inside the Indian eighteen yard box had to pretended to shoot the ball but first of all threw his loosed boot to one direction of the post which the keeper though was the ball while Samuel shot the ball in the opposite direction to score their only goal of the game to make it 99-0. However, as a result for scoring the only goal for Nigeria, he paid with his life as he died on the pitch. As consequence of this, the football governing body banned India from any football competition.
Note. Samuel Okwaraji died during a football match between Nigeria and Angola in second group C match during the world cup qualifiers in 1989. He was a qualified lawyer and had his Master in international law from university of Rome and just signed $500, 000 contracts with Berchem Fc of Antwerp, Belgium. He was 25 years of age and died of heart attack.