Memories of glorious past, Bendel Insurance light up Nigeria’s football

One of the biggest upsets in Nigeria’s football history happened in 1978 at the National Stadium, Lagos. The setting was the national Challenge Cup, which was the most glamorous cup competition in West African football. The gladiators were African champions, Enugu Rangers, which had the bulk of national team players and Bendel Insurance, made up of young school leavers, whose only claim to fame was that they defeated the more illustrious IICC Shooting Stars in the semifinal of the competition. And then, they had Alabi Aisien and belief in their ability.

Apart from breaking the stranglehold Rangers and IICC had on Nigerian football, the FA Cup win also brought the Insurance line up to national reckoning, with those of them, who were not already in the national team, fast tracked into the squad.

However, the memory of Insurance’s rise to glory has so faded that the club, in recent times, have dangled between the elite league and the backwaters of Nigerian football.

Insurance were first relegated to the lower division of Nigerian league at the end of the 2007-08 season, after finishing last in the league. They regained their position in the 2019 season, but after just one season, they went down again.

They won promotion back to the NPFL on the penultimate day of the 2022 season and since the beginning of the 2022/23 season, they have taken the league by storm with five victories and one draw in six games to sit atop Group A of the abridged Nigerian Professional Football League (NPFL).

Can the Benin Arsenal sustain such high performance to the end of the season? Some stakeholders in the club believe they can if the owners maintain the current level of support to the team. They also reminisced on the glory days of the club and