Allen Onyema — Sports and diplomacy hero of the century

Managing Director of Air Peace airlines, Allen Onyema. Photo; WEBFAVOURITES

I wake up to pen my weekly contribution to national sports discourse, and I am confronted with very unpleasant reports of an event that took place in Owerri the day before, far from any sports field or sports event, but still totally impacting Nigerian sports.

In the past two weeks, I have been working on putting to bed a national project conceived by a man with an uncommon love for Nigerians, a man for whom I have developed tremendous respect and admiration since our chance-encounter on the staircase of AirPeace Airline in Abuja some three years ago.

Completely from the blue that evening, after hugs and kisses that we had not seen each other for ages, he dumped on me the idea of coming up with a social event to assemble the surviving members of the 1980 African Cup of Nations national football team, the Green Eagles.

He wants to demonstrate his personal appreciation to all the members of that team for their achievement as Nigeria’s first African Champions, and particularly for fanning the embers of patriotism and nationalism across Nigeria through that historic victory. It was a critical time in the country’s political history when, ten years after the Civil War, a United Nigeria was a much-needed tonic and national clarion call.

I could immediately understand why he loved that particular national team with a passion. Since then, we have interacted more, and I have followed, even beyond his mandate to me, his several other critical interventions in matters concerning ordinary Nigerians, his silent philanthropic and humanitarian works.

Several times, he had come out of his sequestered lifestyle to deploy his aircrafts, at no costs to anyone but