Rangers Int’l Football Club(1): The epic story of a warrior nation that never say die

BY OSA AMADI

Among the incontrovertible facts about Rangers is that it is the greatest. Segun Odegbami puts it this way: “Rangers International Football Club is the greatest football club in the annals of Nigerian football history.”

But the Rangers International Football Club is much more than a football club that gave grade one entertainment to billions of people who love the game of football. It is a symbol and institution of a warrior tribe: It is a living monument and expression of the indomitable spirit and muscle of the Igbos. In part, it is a platform for showcasing the mesmerizing Igbo cultural heritage. In sum, Rangers is a ‘sportish’ embodiment of the political, economic and social ideologies of Igbo people: their inherent republican ideology, their resilient entrepreneurial spirit and their huge capacity to travel and assimilate with other peoples.

Long before Rangers was born, football matches between Igbo and Yoruba teams had been a bone of contention and some kind of ideological contest between Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, and perhaps between ethnic tribes in Nigeria. In 1940, for instance, when Christ the King’s College (CKC) football team, Onitsha, came to Lagos and beat St Gregory’s College 5 goals to 4 in a ‘Win the War’ (World War II) match, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe reported the CKC’s victory in the Pilot newspaper with the title “Football Iliad, 1940 Edition”, using glowing words to describe the exploits of the CKC boys. But Awo (as revealed in his autobiography, page 138) felt so angry about it and saw Zik’s story in the Pilot as “a big step forward in an insidious campaign” by Zik to assert the superiority of Igbos. He accused Zik of seeing “in the sporting exploit and triumph of the team from Onitsha the inherent superiority of the easterners over their opponents” and as part of the scheme by Zik “to build up the Ibos as a master race.” (Awo, page 135).

Awo went on to complain that “on 24 August 1940, the same CKC team played in Ibadan against the Olubadan XI in another ‘Win the War’ match. The CKC were beaten 3-2 by the Olubadan XI…and Zik only reported it “as a small item on the back page (of the Pilot), and (even at that) it was explained in (the story) that the CKC team were already tired and that some of them were in fact limping before they went into the field against Olubadan XI.”

So, football was never neutral in the issues of social and political ideology as many think. Similarly, Rangers is much more than just a football club. The authors of this book know this. In fact, it is the thesis of the book, Rangers International Football Club. That is why the authors subtitled it a History of a people.

Military metaphors dominate the book, in fact such battle field metaphors were a recurring one. In a landmark interview with one of the authors, Edwin Eze, on February 21, 1985, Jerry Enyeazu, founder of Rangers and a veteran Biafran Army officer recounted the very first attempt made at forming Rangers before 1970: “Ojukwu had a very powerful espionage team of which I was a member…in our meeting with the Head of State to address and find remedy to the issue of low morale, we proposed a football team that could be raised to tour the African nations and buoy up the morale of the nation. We had good players that could be assembled and used to actualise that dream. It was the last clandestine move to revive our sagging morale which was getting to a breaking point due to the blockade by Nigerian troops.

“You cannot fight a war successfully if you do not have access to other parts of the world through the sea. One ship load of arms and ammunition is better than thirty trips of cargo plane flown into your country…more than 15 Biafran soldiers who were footballers before the outbreak of the war trickled into Biafran Army Defense Headquarters, Akabo, for the “Win the War Football Campaign.

“There was Christopher Nwobodo, elder brother of Dominic Nwobodo. He later died on active service in the Owerri Sector; Godwin Achebe from 53 Brigade who later became Rangers FC’s first Captain; Goalkeeper Godwin Ezekwe was pulled from Azumini sector; Dominic Nwobodo was invited from 4 Commando Brigade; Chukwuma Igweonwu and Ernest Ufele were too busy in their units in the war front that the signal never got to them. Others were Sylvester Duru, Patrick Ozua, and goalkeeper Nzeakor Dennis, etc.

“As the organisers were still getting ready for the training session, Nigerian soldiers invaded Onne and Uzuoakoli. The project was called off. Soldiers were directed to return to their Forward Edge of their Battle Area (FEBA) and resume hostilities. The project remained still birth till the war abruptly came to an end in January 1970.”

“The agonies of losing the war and losing so many friends, brothers, sisters and parents made the post-war survival a difficult task. Some had broken heart, having lost their houses, belongings and even children and out of frustration died after the war. To take away peoples’ mind from all the agony of the war, sports came into lime light and Chief Jerry Enyeazu and others used sports to revive the peoples’ interest in a new one Nigeria after the war…the first Squad were mainly ex-Biafran soldiers. Nwobodo was in the Biafran Commando Brigade; Achebe was in one of the strike forces but later pulled back to the School of Infantry to train soldiers; Ernest Ufele who later joined us from ECN was a veteran in one of the Biafra’s battalions, I think 7th Battalion and so on. To talk to them before any football match was like a commander marshaling the battle orders to his unit officers. Nwankwo Nwabueze who later joined us from Abakaliki team was a commander of the Biafran vandals in Benin during the war. (We took) war veterans and sent them to football war fields.”

Thus, the first players of Rangers were literally pulled out of the Biafran Army. To them, every encounter with an opponent team was a battle. More so, whenever they met a team from the Nigerian side of the former Biafran/Nigerian divide, it was like “common now, fight! There are no British or American white mercenaries to help you…no more British or Russian tanks, guns and ammunitions to help you. It’s now your bare legs and bare hands versus our bare legs and bare hands…your raw strength versus our raw strength. Common, fight! And the Biafran soldier-footballers always crushed their opponents!

The authors corroborated this analysis when they wrote on page 18: “The fact that the foundation members of the club (Rangers) were mostly Biafran soldiers (who) had done battle against the rest of Nigerians and had (now) sworn to die rather than lose more battles in the field added to their fighting spirit.”

 

Edwin Eze and Emma Okocha (2017) Rangers International Football Club: History of a People. Gomslam International Limited: Enugu.

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