Land for a house of worship
When he learned there was no place of worship, he gave his own land as a seed so one could be built. He believed everything belongs first to God, so giving it back was not a loss. It was a return.
From difficulties to the heights
He came out of the Civil War and helped build a football club that gave a wounded people something to believe in. Rangers took “Never Say Die” as its creed. He lived it on the pitch and off it.
Football history here is drawn from published tributes by Rangers International FC, the Ex-Rangers International Footballers Cooperative, ThisDay and Vanguard. The family may correct any detail.
Helping to start Rangers
Days after the war ended he walked into the Enugu office of founder Jerry Enyeazu with Godwin Achebe to help launch Rangers International, a squad built largely of young men who had lived through the war.
The first recorded match
Rangers played its first recorded match with him in the pioneer forward line, alongside Mathias Obianika, Kenneth Abana, Chukwuma Igweonwu and Shedrack Ajaero.
The goal, the bandage and the name
Against a powerful Nigeria Army XI in Lagos, for the right to represent Nigeria in the 1971 African Cup of Champions Clubs, Rangers won 2–1 and he scored. A deep cut to his head was stitched and wrapped, and he ran back onto the pitch. The bandage looked like a turban, the crowd began chanting “Alhaji”, and commentator Ernest Okonkwo made the name stick for more than fifty years.
Champions of Nigeria
His Rangers generation won three Challenge Cups in a row and the 1975 league and cup double, with a forward line opponents remembered as attacking in waves.
Wearing the green of Nigeria
A feared attacker and a notable national player of the seventies, in the era when Rangers and Shooting Stars supplied most of the national squad.
Coach and elder of the Rangers family
He returned to Rangers as a coach, became a founding father of the Ex-Rangers International Footballers Cooperative, and remained an elder the club turned to.
Called home
He joined the saints at about 7pm, mourned by his family and by the whole Rangers fraternity.