By Patrick Omorodion
To many football administrators, the name Adokie Amiesimaka is one they love to hate. Not for anything but the fact that he never fails to tell them the truth about football which they don’t want to hear. To them, he is unpatriotic because he will never see black and call it white.
Amiesimaka’s ‘notoriety’ in the eyes of Nigeria’s football administrators grew worse during the FIFA U-17 World Cup which Nigeria hosted in 2009. As usual, the administrators drafted over-aged players, one of whom was Amiesimaka’s former player, Fortune Chukwudi, who had played under him as Chairman of the Sharks Football Club of Port Harcourt, now relegated and defunct.
Ordinarily as most Nigerians would do, cover up their own brother and country, Amiesimaka, to the chagrin of the football administrators, cried foul, affirming that Chukwudi was beyond the age required by FIFA for the competition.
He was called names but rather than acquiesce, he supported his claims with documented evidence which forced the administrators who wanted to win by hook or crook to drop the player. The country’s team never really found their bearing as they lost to Switzerland in the final of the competition. A proof that the foundation was never really solid.
Surprisingly too, the player, Chukwudi, who knew that Amiesimaka knew him very well and was not lying, didn’t protest but withdrew quietly into his shell. He never really came out of it. Nobody heard about his exploits again.
Amiesimaka was a few months to his 24th birthday when he helped the Green Eagles, as they were known in those days, to lift the elusive Africa Cup of Nations on home soil in 1980 for the first time. From thence, he never looked back, progressing both in football locally with Rangers of Enugu or professionally as a trained lawyer where he rose to become Commissioner for Justice and Attorney General in his home state, Rivers.
This was many years after he earned the moniker, ‘Chief Justice’ from ace football commentator, late Ernest Okonkwo for his football prowess as a young university law undergraduate of the University of Lagos.
So when administrators, who want to cut corners to earn accolades label him “unpatriotic”, one begins to wonder who is more patriotic, the one who wants Nigeria to build on solid foundation to make bigger impact in the future or those who want to build on sand for pecuniary gains and immediate undeserved rewards?
Amiesimaka is also in the vanguard for the clamour of support for home grown coaches instead of importing half baked technical men all in the name of foreign coaches. He however, believes that not all local coaches should be given the responsibility to handle our teams except of course such an individual has done enough to equip himself with the know-how of the job.
Because he is one who will never bend the rules no matter whose ox is gored, he was called upon to be the chairman of the Court of Arbitration in Sports, CAS which the Nigeria Olympic Committee set up recently. He didn’t refuse to accept the responsibility, otherwise he would be accused of only criticising, but inside him, he knew the project may not see the light of the day. Why? Because Nigerians are not ready for the truth, as it concerns sports politics, yet. As I write this, I don’t know what has become of the Nigerian CAS which the erudite lawyer was supposed to head.
When somebody is good, truthful, upright and transparent, no matter how hard his traducers want to bring him down, those who know him will always speak well of him in glowing terms like the friends and followers of the great ‘Chief Justice’ of the Green Eagles of old, Amiesimaka did a few days ago when he clocked the Diamond Jubilee this past week.
Amiesimaka’s 60th birthday was brought to the knowledge of all by no less a person than another vanguard of the truth in Nigerian sports, Afolabi Gambari, a renowned sports journalist with National Mirror newspapers. His tribute on Amiesimaka sparked off many more accolades from far and near, proving that Amiesimaka is a patriot who has contributed and is still contributing to make Nigeria’s sports and other sectors of our country great.
Gambari wrote this about Amiesimaka: “As a young lawyer back in the 1980s, he did great justice with the ball on the football pitch. He was appropriately nicknamed “Chief Justice”, and the nickname has stuck to this day and will outlive him.
But he is indeed a consummate lawyer, in addition to being Nigeria ex-international with an AFCON gold medal in the shelf, longest-serving commissioner for Justice in Rivers State, football administrator, sublime radio broadcaster, outstanding newspaper columnist, philanthropist, humanist, polyglot, community leader and much more. Everything he has done, he has done with uncommon distinction.”
The accolades on Amiesimaka would not have been complete without the contribution from another gadfly in the sports sector, Jide Fashikun who wrote this “Adokiye remains one symbol I use in my teachings that athletes can be exceptional even in academics and professional practise. Afo, God bless and increase you for me to have the room to celebrate him (Amiesimaka) in a little space here. God, please flourish Adokiye with his heart desires as we keep gaining inspiration that we, coming after him, are yet to achieve.”
So many people said so many nice things about this patriotic Nigeria but space wouldn’t allow me use them here. On behalf of them all and other Nigerians who enjoyed your prowess on the field and others still enjoying your analysis of our sports and football in particular, I say Happy birthday Chief Justice Adokie Amiesimaka.
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Originally posted by Adeshola