My name is Seģun Odegbami.
It is a popular name alright in Nigeria, but more people across the African continent know me as ‘Mathematical’, a nickname coined and gifted to me by a famous sports commentator, late Ernest Okonkwo, during broadcast of football matches on Radio Nigeria in those days.
He was one of a pool of sports commentators at a time in Nigerian football that took the game to the greatest heights through their beautiful, gripping and entertaining commentaries at a time when radio was a bigger and more effective medium than television.
Before Ernest Okonkwo was Ishola Folorunsho. Along with Ernest was a generation of other gifted sports casters – Sebastine Ofurum, Tolu Fatoyinbo, Kevin Ejiofor, Dele Adetiba, Yinka Craig, Edem Duke and a few others. Their generation, with the sheer power of their commentaries on radio, drove the followership of football in Nigeria to stratospheric levels. They filled the stadia. They sold the newspapers. They turned good players to greats, and immortalised the best of them with nicknames.
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By the turn of the last Century, the last of the great football commentators, Emeka Odikpo, Shina Abimbola, and a few others started to make their exit. The tribe ‘vaporised’ in the plume of proliferation of new FM radio stations that took over the space once dominated and monopolized by Radio Nigeria.
The power of conventional radio as a major influence in Nigerian sports diminished in the new world of the Internet of things.
Today, conventional live sports commentating on radio hardly exists in the Nigerian football industry. Few stations have the finances to invest on their own in the coverage of events without major sponsors that view the reach of FM radio stations with apprehension. It is not too difficult, therefore, to understand why football superstars from the domestic leagues are no longer born and bred. Those that succeed must migrate abroad in order to earn that status in today’s Nigeria.
Meanwhile, in other well-established sports environs of Europe and America, the art of Sports commentating sustains, still creating sports superstars, attracting millions of faithful fans to grounds, and billions of followers to television sets, online platforms and whatever is left of terrestrial radio.
World famous commentators like Peter Drury, Martin Tyler, Martin Davis, and many others are still around, still waxing strong and lyrical, birthing new stars with their literary style, waiting for special moments during matches to unleash poetic words and language crafted in heaven.
Radio is now more challenging and interesting, an interesting mix of sound and vision, and available to everyone with a handset anywhere in the world. Radio in Nigeria must now catch up with the reality of present-day digital technology and the challenges of the information superhighway.
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Nigeria must take useful lessons from its rich past in sports commentating, and innovate in a new tango with the present day demands of radio.
Football commentating on radio in Nigeria was extremely popular in the 1960s. Even when television came and people had the option of watching the matches on the screen, most people would still turn down the volume of their TV sets, turn up the commentaries on their radio sets and follow the big matches.
So powerful were the radio commentators that many fans at various stadia during matches would hold their little transistor radios to their ears and would listen to the Live radio commentaries whilst watching the matches.
What was so compelling about radio then was the language of the commentators, their analysis, their expressiveness, description of the players and the atmosphere beyond what people could ordinarily see, gripping listeners in a vice of undiluted tension, unbridled emotions and pure entertainment, creating moments etched in history and making immortals of sports heroes.
Nigerian sports, particularly football, need the return of great commentators on radio to fuel the engine of the domestic leagues and games. They create the superstars that drive interest, followership and the whole sports industry to greater heights.
That’s my whole purpose of venturing into ownership of a radio station at a time when most of the industry is on life-support
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My ambition is to revive the tradition of live radio commentaries of domestic and international football matches and some sports events.
As we march forward into 2015, there is a need to take something from how Christian Chukwu became known forever as ‘Chairman’; Rashidi Yekini, as ‘Gangling’; Alloysius Atuegbu, ‘Block buster’; Kelechi Emeteole,’ Caterpillar’; and Adokiye Amiesimaka, as ‘Chief Justice’.
Radio and Sports, in my time, were like tea and Sugar, Siamese Twins, one incomplete without the other.
Ernest Okonkwo must be shaking in excitement in his grave right now.
