I anchor a new sports programme on Africa’s
largest television network, the NTA, with a
conservative domestic viewership of some 60
million Nigerians in all corners of the country. The
live programme,The Sports Parliament, has been
running for 10 weeks.
This past week the topic of conversation and
examination for the seven parliamentarians in
session on the show, was of sports facilities and
infrastructure in Nigeria with particular
focus on the National Stadium, Surulere, Lagos, a
sprawling sports complex, and once a monument
for an authentic sports development and sports
engagement programme in Nigeria that has now
gone bad. Today the stadium is wasting in
dereliction, lying idle and decaying in a sea of
humongous opportunities and possibilities.
During the programme, the conversation on the
National Stadium in Lagos kept reminding me of
another even bigger sports infrastructural
disaster, one that must also be brought to public
attention so that history will document the facts of
the incalculable damage done to a national
heritage, a collection of sports edifices destroyed
through the deliberate acts of incompetency and
misdeed by a few greedy sports administrators in
power at the time, and well known to Nigerians.
They have retired now from the service, are
‘enjoying’ the spoils of their actions, and have left
the rest of the country to carry the burdens and
bear the consequences of their ignoble acts.
There are other such similar stories of wasting
and mostly idle facilities around the country that
also must be told. But here is the story of the
greatest edifice yet in our country’s history that
was destroyed before our very eyes and is now
left to rot in the dungeon of history.
I paid my first visit to the Liberty Stadium, Ibadan,
as a student of The Polytechnic Ibadan when I
went to watch the finals of the Nigerian Challenge
Cup (the FA Cup) played in that wonderful sports
edifice between Bendel Insurance FC of Benin and
Mighty Jets FC of Jos. That was eons ago in
1971. How time flies.
I was a teenager straight out of a ‘bush’ closet in
the hinterland of Nigeria, from the serene,
beautiful, cool, tin mining city of Jos high up in a
bowl on the plateau some 2000 feet above sea
level. It was a huge culture shock to be thrown
from that background into the middle of a
developed, heavily populated, most politically
active environment of Ibadan, the largest city in
West Africa then, and capital of one of the most
culturally advanced, sophisticated and educated
Black tribes on earth – the Yoruba.
I was fascinated by the city – the sprawling
University of Ibadan, the Cocoa House
skyscraper, the wide boulevard on Queen
Elizabeth road, the University Teaching hospital
and Liberty Stadium! All of these were built and
remained functional since around the period of
Nigeria’s Independence in 1960! Naturally, it was
the stadium that held the greatest fascination for
me.
On that memorable evening in 1971, I had the
opportunity of my first visit to the stadium.
The stadium had a massive reputation at that
time, particularly following the world boxing title
fight between Nigeria’s Dick Tiger and America’s
Gene Fulmer in July 1963 transmitted by Africa’s
first television station around the world from
Ibadan, the first city in Africa to set up a television
station! Nigeria’s Dick Tiger fought and won that
fight to become the world’s welterweight
champion.
That was the stadium to host the first FA Cup final
outside Lagos. The match itself was moved to
Ibadan from Lagos, following the controversy
generated by the first match at the King George V
stadium (Onikan Stadium) in Lagos. The match
had ended abruptly in confusion with the last kick
of the ball in that match taken by late Samuel
Garba Okoye. As he struck it, the ball and the long
blast of the whistle ‘sailed’ simultaneously
together into the Bendel Insurance goal. Was it the
signal of a goal? Or was it the signal of the end of
the match?
In the ensuing mayhem, no one was sure what the
decision of the referee was.
The crowd incursion that followed the final whistle
did not help matters.
The result of that match was decided later that
evening in the NFA boardroom. The goal was
awarded to Mighty Jets of Jos, making the final
scores 2 – 2. A replay was ordered but this time
the match would be played in the more secure,
better stadium and immaculate turf of the world
class Liberty Stadium in Ibadan!
That’s how I had my first opportunity to watch an
FA Cup final as well as see and experience Liberty
Stadium.
Liberty stadium had a capacity of 25,000. It was
an all-seater stadium with an underground
entrance leading right into the main playing pitch,
an architectural wonder at the time and still
considered something special even today in the
world of stadia design.
Liberty stadium, with its first class drainage and
watering systems, immaculate lush, flat,
greenBermuda grass turf, was way ahead of its
time even in 1971.
The turf and its daily maintenance regimen were a
major tourist attraction. It was not uncommon to
see hundreds of students from schools from all
over Western Nigeria at the stadium early in the
mornings on excursion, to watch the daily
synchronized sprinkler system of watering, as
well as the grass mowing techniques of cutting
patterns on the field surface, all coordinated by a
highly UK-trained staff of pioneer professional
stadium managers and grounds men led by late
Chief Ogunyemi. This team, under Ogunyemi,
became the bedrock of stadium management and
groundsmanship in Nigeria.
In the mid-1990s, the federal government took
over the ownership of Liberty Stadium in
preparation for bidding and probably
hosting Nigeria ‘99, the FIFA World Youth football
championship.
An Israeli company was contracted to do the
renovation and expansion work in the stadium.
The work took a few years, but one year into the
renovation work, the head engineer of the project,
lamented to us in a private chat at the stadium at
the time that what they met underground the
Liberty Stadium field was way ahead of anything
they had ever handled even in Europe. They were
absolutely stunned at the sophisticated drainage
and watering system in place, and that there was
no need to have excavated anything and replaced
it with an untested underground watering system
calledCell system that they had been contracted
to do. Israel he confessed did not even have such
a system!
Prophetically the entire work was a disaster. The
damage was irreparable. Liberty Stadium that
used to be the hub of social and sports activity in
the whole of Western Nigeria, ‘died’!
No decent sports event, of national or international
dimension, has taken place in that venue again
since then.
The legacy built by the sage, Chief Obafemi
Awolowo, and left behind to develop and promote
the best culture of sports in Nigeria was
permanently destroyed by greedy and, probably,
ignorant sports administrators in the NSC/
Federal Ministry of Sports of that era.
That edifice is now a shadow, a colossal national
disgrace, a monumental disaster, a psychological
depressant, a permanent eyesore, a skeleton in
the sun, a daily reminder of how a few Nigerians
have raped our country and destroyed our
heritage.
https://www.completesportsnigeria.com/odegbami-killing-liberty-stadium-one-best-stadia-world/

Corruption stopped Nigeria from becoming what she should have being.