Nigeria’s football community mourns as coach Ismaila Mabo ‘bows out’

Ismaila Mabo

• NFF, IMC, Lalung, Omagbemi, others eulogises late coach

Nigeria’s football community was thrown into mourning, yesterday, following the news of the demise of former Green Eagles defender and Super Falcons coach, Ismaila Mabo.

Mabo, who died at the age of 80, led the senior women national team, the Super Falcons, to the quarterfinal at USA ’99 FIFA World Cup, the best performance by any Nigerian senior team.   According to reports, Mabo died in the early hours of yesterday after a protracted illness. Since the news broke, members of the football community, including the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), Plateau United Football Club of Jos and the Interim Management Committee (IMC) of the Nigerian Professional Football League (NPFL) have been eulogising the octogenarian.

Speaking on the coach, NFF President, Ibrahim Gusau, said: “The death of Pa Ismaila Mabo came to me as a huge shock. Again, we have lost a great man and an accomplished trainer-of-trainers in the Nigeria Football fraternity, and my heart goes out to his immediate family and the other loved ones he has left behind.   “Mabo laid down a big marker for other coaches when he steered the Super Falcons to the quarter-finals of the FIFA Women’s World Cup in the USA in 1999. Yet, he was simple, humble and humane. We will miss him, but we are consoled that he left giant footprints in the sands of time and pray that God will grant him eternal rest.”

A gifted central defender, Ismaila Mabo started as a schoolboy international with the Nigeria academicals team that broke the chain of Ghana’s constant whipping of Nigerian teams, when they defeated Ghana’s academicals 1-0 in Accra on February 13, 1966. It was the first time any Nigerian team would defeat a