Title: Rashidi Yekini – The life and times of Nigeria’s goal king…
Author: Jibril Mohammed Olanrewaju
Publishers: Reality, Ibadan
No. of Pages: 186
Reviewer: Edozie Udeze
The story of the life and times of the late Rashidi Yekini, Nigeria’s former goal merchant, fondly called gangling Yekini, is full of ironies of life. In a biography entitled Rashidi Yekini – The life and times of Nigeria’s goal king…, Jibril Mohammed Olanrewaju, his lawyer for many years, tells the funny, gory, irritating and turbulent life of someone who passed through so much torture and fury to be who he was in his life time.
It is a story of sorrow; a story which shows that a man’s life is often determined and shaped by the decisions he has taken for himself and for his destiny. Yekini chose the path of fame strewn with agony to reach the peak of his career. Or it seemed the gods wanted to lavish fame on him, but never gave him time to savour his glorious rise to stardom in peace and tranquility. His was a unique life in many diverse ways.
Having been Yekini’s personal lawyer for over fifteen years, Olanrewaju was able to trace his story back to the north where he was born. From there, he moved to Ibadan in 1983 where he began his professional football career. From that humble beginning, Yekini rose steadily to limelight, playing for many world-class football clubs.
Within ten years he had proved to be Nigeria’s best goal-scorer that, at the 1994 World Cup, he proved to be the cynosure of all eyes. This rise to stardom came with a mixture of curses and blessings for this gifted footballer who dropped out of primary school to be who he was.
On his way to the top, he encountered a number of women. It wasn’t really clear whether Yekini was not meant for women or that women were not meant for him. On the whole, he married over four women but none could stay with him. Perhaps the gods ordained it to be so. So with this, his travails came in multiple dimensions and intensity.
He was haunted both by the women who couldn’t hold him together and his relations who wanted to strip him of his wealth, for he was really wealthy. The biography is deep in a way that you can see Yekini in the book. He lived a life of voluntary solitude in which he preferred to be alone. By this, his people considered him to be insane, including his mother who continually pestered that he be taken to a mental home. After several attempts by his relations to hound him failed, he was finally caged last year, and eventually bundled to an undisclosed location.
Three weeks after the torture that followed, Yekini was declared dead. It is a pathetic story, so moving that you’d shed tears. Why would he be so inhumanly treated by his own people, people he had done so much for to better their lives?
In a simple narrative style, the biographer tells the story of barbarism at its worst. It is only in a place like Nigeria that such an incident would happen to such a big star and no one bothers to ask questions. Why would Yekini, a man who gave his all to his native land be so treated by mere village people? It is so disheartening that not even his neighbours could rise to help him when his abductors mowed him down, chained and clubbed him to submission.
Not even his cry of agony could elucidate attention from the people. Even in life, Yekini fought many battles but none was like that day when he saw his house last. After chaining him, they bundled him into a waiting 505 car which took him to his Golgotha.
In life, Yekini dedicated his whole life to football. This is a passion he followed rigidly even in retirement. To those who knew him, he was too good to be true.
The book which the author said was produced within a short period of time has plenty of errors in the areas of editing and typography. Yet it does not in any way distract from that fact that Rashidi Yekini was unceremoniously slaughtered and no one is saying a thing about it. It is so unfortunate.
When will the sanity of the society be restored? When will relations begin to allow their people to choose how to live their own lives? The story of Yekini is truly an eye-opener to those whose relations pester them too often.
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