Hurrah, Eagle7 Sports Radio  Is One – A Year Of Travails, Trials And Triumph! –Odegbami

On this special day I humbly seek the permission of all that are reading this to hide under the license of my column to delve into elementary philosophy. Life is too complex a subject for me to attempt to x-ray mine in any other way.

On this day, as on all other days before and after today, I am grateful to the Creator for letting me fulfil what, I believe, is my purpose in life – to do good and to do well, to play my small part, and to leave the rest to him who neither rewards nor punishes, but has made provision from the beginning of time for ‘everyone according to their seeds and deeds’.

Many years ago, I became aware that life is a moment-to-moment race spent experiencing or creating everything in existence.

At different times, I have been steered along my path by a few persons whose words and actions have been the tools I have deployed to manage unique experiences that constitute my life, from moment to moment.

My father once marched me into a police station when I was about 10 years old, and handed me over to the police to explain how I came about 7 new football jerseys that I brought home from one of my football games that we played on the streets in Jos every evening. That became a big lesson in responsibility and transparency in my life. I have not paid a second visit to a police station since then.

Late Chief Olalekan Salami, former Chairman of Shooting Stars Football Club, Ibadan, impacted my life as a young football player. He led me to sport as a potential career. That experience with him as my guide became the foundation upon which I built my life beyond sport without knowing it at the time.

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Former Governor of Plateau State, Colonel Aliu Kama, told me at lunch one day in Kaduna that despite being his friend he could not approve a contract that I sought from him to produce an Information Handbook for the State.  His reason was that my huge reputation as a sports person would expose him and make him unable to justify awarding a job that was outside of sport to me. “Bring me any project on sports and I will approve it with my eyes closed”, he said.

Although I later brought him one, he approved it but then awarded it to one of his friends, not me. It was a lesson that became seared on my mind, an experience destined for a place in my memoirs, and as a guide in my life thereafter.

I got closer to Late Dr. Samuel Osaigbovo Ogbemudia, former Governor, former Minister and political leader, several years after I had retired from active football and was struggling to find a pathway in sports administration.

He loved me to bits. For the next 2 decades, he took me under his wings and became my political mentor. His great wish was for me to be made Nigeria’s Sports Minister. He tried without success to convince a Head of State and, later, a President, to disrupt the ethnic/zonal arrangements and appoint me one. One, in particular, pointedly told him it was impossible because I was from Ogun State. Federal character quote system on how ministers were appointed, with input from State Governors, did not favour me, coming from a South-West State.

Dr. Ogbemudia it was, that guided me through my early political classes, a complex area of the humanities that I could neither fully understand nor master. Yet, every experience, including my attempts to head the NFA and FIFA became great lessons in my life.

There was late Dr. Gamaliel Onosode, a most respected Boardroom Guru. I spent several years at his feet. We would congregate in his home on the annual anniversary of his birth day to drink from his fountain of knowledge and experiences with his children, led by his son, my friend, Ese, as well as Godwin Dudu-Orumen who led me to meet that incredible family.

The more I got to know about Dr. Onosode, the more I wanted to model my life after him, regardless of all the baggage of ‘missed roads’ that I carried prior to meeting him. His, was a life of dignity, simplicity, industry, morals, spirituality, decency and integrity.

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I once asked him about Integrity in the Nigerian society.

He looked me in the eye, and with a gentle smile on his face, told me that Integrity is a hard, long and lonely journey, but with its reward in respect and peace of the mind at the end. He warned me that in Nigeria, it is not a journey for the faint hearted.

These were the mentors in my life. They led me to accept and to live the reality that in my journey through life I am stuck to Sport, the art gifted to me by the elements. I have had to look, to see and to live my life through that lens. What I find is the fascinating interconnectivity of all things; that Life is a whole, broken down only for convenience, for the ease of learning, for better understanding and for communal living by humans. In absolute reality, everything in life is One, inextricably connected, compartmentalized into science, arts, technology, engineering, medicine, law, finance, business, environment, government, politics, agriculture, economics, education, culture, entertainment, sports, etc.

So, I have accepted my fate, and now live my life anchored to Sports.

That’s why my life after a sports career has been an umbilical cord with sport – the books that I wrote, the athletes that I managed, my foray into journalism, my consultancy, my proprietorship of a school, and, finally, the newest baby, the radio station. They all have Sport pre-fixing them.

Sport and I have been Siamese Twins through most of life on earth. To survive, I have had to draw lessons from sport along the way. The road has not always been easy; strewn with hurdles and challenges every inch of the way; frustrating and exhilarating at the same time; demanding uncommon hard work, discipline, dedication, complete focus, plenty of luck, endless practice, patience, perseverance, failures and more failure. In short, to succeed in life, as in sport, is hard.

There are short cuts in life, of course, but using them produces only pyrrhic victories, short-lived and non-sustaining guides for the next generation. To succeed with integrity is a long, lonely and hard journey.

That’s the road I have chosen to walk, slowly and steadily, soaking in all the pleasures and pains of every experience, grateful to the Creator for both in a life for which I am very grateful.

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As you read this, yesterday, July 7, was the first anniversary of the ‘birth’ of Eagle7 Sports Radio. Its story is the stuff of a block buster movie plot.

It took 18 years for my application for a radio license to be granted, even when licenses were been doled out to political patrons like confetti. Some people had 3, 4 and 5 licenses that they did not need or use. All my reputation, accomplishments and contributions in sports could not do anything to nudge the process.

The Covid pandemic came and struck the whole world. For almost two years, against all odds, we started the building process. We ran the ‘race’ without any income from any source for the entire period, feeding on the manna of tears, sweat and blood of weary staff and a few friends that trusted to join me as shareholders to ward me off plunging into the debt-traps of borrowed funds and impossible collaterals demands of commercial banks.

On July 7, 2022, we started broadcasting to the world. We have spent our first-year mastering and managing challenges and hurdles.

As we begin our journey into year-two today, we are ready to fly and soar like an Eagle, and take our audience to places in audio/visual radio broadcasting they have never been before.

To succeed in the next year, will be my prize for a life of decency, hard work, creativity, dignity and integrity in this clime and time. So far, it has been an eventful year of trials, travails and triumph.

I thank all our Clients, Listeners, Staff and Shareholders.

Olusegun Odegbami