The King is dead, long live the king

The world is mourning the passage of ‘the Black King’. I cannot help but add my humble voice to the outpouring of tributes. My friend Idy calls me up this morning from the United States. He wants to know if flags will be flown at half mast in Nigeria today in mournful acknowledgment of the passage of a great Black man whose place in Black history is in the category of Muhammed Ali, Nelson Mandela and Patrice Lumumba.

Afterall, Uyoe reminds me, Pele, at a time in Nigeria’s history, temporarily halted the civil war between soldiers of the armies of Nigeria and Biafra to enable them follow the commentaries of a football match that held in Lagos. He thinks that for that feat alone, Pele deserves more than mere pedestrian tributes, and must be accorded the highest respect, recognition and honour by Nigeria at his death.

So, I am thinking. No, Nigeria will not fly flags at half-mast, or declare any days of mourning.

This is simply because most people do not know enough about Pele’s relationship with Nigeria to warrant such a huge step. That story has to be told. Idy’s question provokes that interrogation.

Shortly after the Nigerian Civil War started in 1967, Santos FC of Brazil, a small urban club in Sao Paolo until Pele made it globally famous, visited Nigeria in 1969 at the invitation of the Nigeria Football Association, NFA.

The Nigeria/Biafra War was raging at the time in the Eastern part of Nigeria, but was hardly felt in other parts, particularly in Lagos, far from the theatre of the brutal war. The soldiers on both sides, weary from the carnage of the war, must have needed a respite. It must have come in the innocuous form of a friendly football match that would feature the most famous player on the planet.

In the