Safety Guide for Footballers

 By Jonas Agwu

I am proudly a Gunner. And it is for life. Forever. I am not like Chris Kehinde Nwandu, CKN, my brother from another mother. For the records, Chris was a Gunner some years back. He couldn’t stand the rigours of watching our darling team play with a nurse and a doctor on standby.

Like I wrote a couple of weeks ago, Arsenal was dubbed a team without character; a win today, a draw and another draw and losses. We have since become the team with the football chemistry that every football pundit loves to watch. It was in those good bad days that my twin brother angrily potted to Manchester United.

Today, Chris is neither a Red nor a Gunner. In fact,Chris is in a limbo.I won’t be surprised to hear that my brother has again jumped ship and dumped Manchester in the face of their drubbing by Liverpool to now support Eyimba Football Club. Today’s piece is not about Arsenal or Manchester United. It is about deaths on the roads involving footballers and football teams.

Except I missed it somewhere, but I doubt if the appropriate and right interventions have been taken to stop the crashes, the deaths and injuries. Let me start the rehash with the most recent one involving Heartland FC which occurred on August 24, 2024.The incident according to the club occurred at Ummunna, near Okigwe, Imo State.

The crash occurred while the team was travelling in three vehicles to my beautiful state capitol, Abakaliki for the Ifeanyi Ekwueme TICO/SELECT Pre-season tournament. The club said in a statement that the crash occurred when ‘’in an attempt to avoid a collision with an oncoming vehicle, one of the Heartland vehicles crashed into a carelessly parked car that was involved in another crash.

No fatalities were reported at the scene of the crash which occurred at about 4pm. But there were injuries sustained by some players and officials. The crash occurred at about 4pm meaning that visibility couldn’t have been an issue. It was however reported that the impact of the crash caused a sudden shock to the coach,Christain Obi who was unconscious with a slight injury to his right leg upon evacuation from the badly affected part of the bus.

I doff my hat for the late coach whose legacy will forever remain with us and pray that we do the right things to put a stop to these incidents. For the record, the crash was not the first. Neither will it be the last. Please allow me to take you through the memory lane. In 2021, a report in the media captioned, “Four accidents, two robberies-how roads are becoming death traps for NPL clubs,” was published.

The report was about a road traffic crash which occurred on March 18,2021 involving Eyimba Football club Youth team on its way back to Aba from a tournament in Imo State. The report emphatically stressed that before this incident, various clubs had experience similar fate. They range from road traffic crashes, robberies, kidnapping among others.
The trend, it noted, became worrisome in 2021.The timelines are as follows starting with Wikki Tourist. The club bus, it reported, was reduced to fire and steel on February 16,2021. According to the report, the bus conveying Wikki Tourists Football club of Bauchi caught fire along the Jos-Bauchi highway while on their way to Uyo,Akwa Ibom state capital for a week ten league match against Dakkada FC of Uyo.
No life was lost but valuables were. The cause of this mishap according to the State FA Chairman was tyre. He was quoted as saying that, ‘’one of the back tyres came off in motion and the rim and silencer ignited the fire on the road due to the contact.”

Four days after the incident there was another. This was on February 20,2021 involving Adamawa Utd FC. It was a case of robbery and abduction. The bus, according to the report, was transporting players who were attacked by bandits along the Benin-Lagos highway.
They were on their way to honor a weekend match against MFM FC. The bus driver was abducted and a fifty million ransom demanded although he was released after the payment of one million naira.

Three days after this incident it was the turn of the Lagos Landladies on February 23,2021. The report noted that FC Robo, a Nigerian Women Football League side was attacked by gunmen along Ijebu-Ode Road, Ogun State.  The team from Lagos was heading to Agbor, Delta State for their week seven match against Delta Queen. No life again was lost but they lost their valuables and were left stranded.

No other incident was reported in February. The next was in March of the same year. It was on March 12,2021. It was a head-on collision involving Akwa United. Three were hospitalized as a result.

The clubs bus according to report crashed in Enugu after a head-on collision with a truck enroute Kaduna to honor their week fifteen match against Jigawa Golden stars. A player and two officials sustained injuries.
The next was Ekiti. This was a crash involving Ekiti United Football club while returning from their training session. The crash was a lone crash. No death was recorded. Only injuries. The report said they were returning to Ado from Ikere after training. The crash was said to have been caused by slippery roads caused by rain.

If we were to update the incidents and crashes up till date, I am sure the number rather than reduce will increase; an indication that sustained intervention by relevant agencies and the football authorities has not been taken to address these unfortunate incidents. Next week, I will dig deep into the issues involved and what we need to do to save our footballers.