For those of us in a certain age bracket, the above picture is one of 90’s football’s most iconic images. Rashidi Yekini crying into the net after scoring Nigeria’s first ever goal in a World Cup, in a 3-0 dismissal of eventual semi-finalists Bulgaria. In a tournament that featured Baggio and Maradona, and Ireland beating Italy, this may well be the image that many remember most vividly. In May 2012, the national hero pictured above died aged 48. The circumstances around his death are bizarre and may even be horrific if the real truth ever emerges. For now, there is no real clarity – rumour and intrigue surround this story and may always.
But first, it’s only right to look at this man’s great football career. 37 goals in 58 games for Nigeria; 90 in 114 for Vitoria Setubal in Portugal. At his peak, he was comfortable in the upper echelons of European football, being top scorer in the Portuguese League in 1993-94, as Setubal finished 6th. And, of course, the man who lit the spark as Nigeria made the last 16 of USA 94.
In May 2012, reports state that he died in a traditional Nigerian healing home. Chained to the floor. Screaming. Rumours are that we was kidnapped by family members, against whom he had taken out a restraining order. He was shackled, thrown into the back of a van and brought to this place. He was buried mere hours after his death. No inquest took place and the story was that he had suffered cardiac shock, despite having no record of any difficulties in that regard. The official family line is that he had slowly lost it and they did all they could to help him until eventually he died during an intervention of some sort.
Things are rumoured to have started to turn bad for Yekini when he lost all his savings in an investment with a man named Ibraheem. It seems he transferred all of his wealth to this man in cash before he was gunned down and robbed, by men tipped off that he was going to be carrying a huge amount of money – Yekini’s money. Even this story doesn’t feature in all accounts, but could explain partly the downward spiral he went on. Pathetic stories of him being seen in scruffy clothes; wandering the streets of Ibadan; relieving himself on the side of the road; selling plantains on the street; pepper the various accounts given of his final years.
His family claim he suffered serious mental health problems and that they had tried again and again to intervene. Local police and his friends claim he had a restraining order against his relatives and that his death was preceded by his kidnapping. His friend and barrister Jibril Mohammed is quoted in the Blizzard as saying Yekini had been close to his family. He opened a supermarket for his sister, bought his mother a two-storey building and sponsored his footballing brother to go to Cote d’Ivoire. But things went awry as the family, as is claimed, became obsessed with his money. It seems that Yekini’s eccentricities were over-egged in order to paint a picture of a man teetering on the edge of madness.
His daughter Yemisi tells a different story. He seemed fine when they spoke on the phone – she lived in London. This view of a perfectly sensible man was backed up by Mohammed, who said he had a physician visiting and that his health was fine. Neighbours attested to this view – one of a very generous man who wished to live in peace and a degree of solitude. One who would look for you when he wanted you and who had a fairly steady routine. In May of this year Yemisi and her sister Omoyemi once again requested that an inquest into their father’s death is opened. At a press conference in Lagos, Yemisi had these words to say:
“You don’t know whether he was killed, or he was drugged, or he was ill; there are no answers…”
A man whose joyous face was beamed across the globe and became the defining image of a World Cup died with no proof of illness and no death certificate, buried immediately under concrete. And with a strange concoction of intrigue surrounding him, bound up in the private realm of the family and Nigerian social structures and customs. He obviously deserves far more than this. From his family and from Nigeria as a country and their football association. And his daughters deserve this closure as well.
Further reading:
Rashidi Yekini’s children want inquest 4 years after father’s death
Untold story of Rashidi Yekini’s last days
A Yard of Grass 
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