August 20, 2026
Greetings!
I am Harry Agina, the CEO of the Afro-Scope Project, here to introduce the very first story of our Sports Category. It’s a thriller written by an Octogenarian, Elder Chris Ngwu. In his active professional days, Chris was a broadcaster with Nigeria’s “National Television Authority (NTA).” He mostly was a reporter of great repute at Nigeria’s federal State House.
“George nwam o, ejekwena maka Balogun” is an Igbo phrase. The ‘o’ after “nwam” is an exclamation sound of fear. Translated to English, it reads: George my son o! Do not go, because Balogun is there. That was the advice of a concerned mother to her football (soccer) goalkeeper son, George Onyemezie, at the Zaria Railway Station in Zaria, northern Nigeria. The Kano Football Association(X1) team was heading by train for Lagos in southwest Nigeria, and had stopped at the Railway station for a short break. Passenger trains in those days used to stop for a while at different railway stations en route the final destination of their journey. For instance passenger trains from Kano to Lagos would stop in Zaria, Kaduna, Minna, Offa, Ibadan for about 30 minutes, to drop passengers and pick up new passengers , and give the train drivers and ticketing officers refreshment time.
It was at this journey break time that George Onyemezie’s mother ,a Zaria resident went to plead with her goal keeper son, not to continue the journey to Lagos, where the Kano X1 football team was to meet a Lagos team that had the much feared Teslimi “Thunder” Balogun in its line up. But George, a highly rated and respected goalkeeper in the then Northern Nigeria, just pleaded with his mother not to be scared by the story Balogun’s killer shots and that he George was well prepared for the match. George’s mother left for home from the Zaria Railway station broken hearted and sobbing intermittently. The team went to Lagos played their matches with George unscathed. The Kano X1 was the first football team from outside Lagos to win the prestigious Governor’s Cup( later Challenge Cup).
For many years later, the words of George Onyemezie’s plea to her son, were mimicked to mockingly taunt the siblings of George Onyemezie in Zaria.
