Afolabi Gambari
Had the Confederation of African Football (CAF) not postponed the African Nations Championship (CHAN) billed to commence on February 1 to a yet-to-be-determined date in August, Rabiu Ali, one of the listed players to represent Nigeria at the competition, would have entered the record book as the world’s oldest footballer to participate in a major tournament. Born on September 27 1980, Ali would have been 44 years and five months by the time the continental event got underway. But even at that, the record can only still serve him better by the new August date when he would be just a month shy of 45 years.
The story of Ali, who is currently the captain of Kano Pillars Football Club, is nothing but remarkable, if not extraordinary. Having not attended school beyond the primary level, he has now played football virtually all his life. Yet, he says retirement is not in his immediate plan. No one would doubt his resolve. In the current Nigeria Professional Football League season in its 22nd week, he has scored eight goals, four of which were from free kicks easily ranking him among the league’s top scorers.
The native of Kano State having joined Pillars from Nasarawa United in 2009, he has now featured for the Pillars for 16 straight years, a feat no other league player can rival in this age when hopping from club to club in search of better condition has been a tradition in the Nigerian scene for more than two decades. It is a measure of Ali’s loyalty that he has not for once contemplated a move away from Pillars, let alone make any effort to actualise the move. Nor has he also harboured a move abroad, although many of his contemporaries have toured several countries plying their trade before returning home to retire.
Although Ali is a midfielder and has never been deployed in a striking position, he has found goalscoring a comfortable task, as accentuated already by his haul in the ongoing season. On the whole, he has since joining Pillars in 2009 amassed 273 games for the club, scoring 72 goals – most of which proved useful in vital games locally and in continental games. Perhaps, due to the unwritten policy that has placed total focus on the Nigerian players abroad in the composition of the main Super Eagles team, Ali’s prowess never attracted the team’s selectors. But he always made the Eagles’ B team specifically for players in the NPFL and has never failed to make his inclusion count. As it were, he also got called up to the Eagles’ B team in his twilight. Despite that, he has still grossed 20 caps, scoring five goals. Little wonder, the latest selectors for the team to participate in the upcoming CHAN still could not ignore him en route winning the latest ticket.
To the casual observer, there must be something special keeping a 44-year-old player going strong, playing full-time week in and week out in Pillars’ colours. But Ali says there is no big deal. “It is all about mindset and discipline,” he also says. The mindset has to do with the undying passion that he has had for football since he was a seven-year-old at the Fagge Primary School, Kano and the discipline has to do with regular training and a spartan life that abhors alcohol and smoking.
Ali’s sublime skills, dedication and loyalty have come with a huge reward. Very few people in Kano and environ are as popular as he is. For a city whose people are renowned for commerce, culture and politics, it should be curious that a football player would get a huge dose of limelight with an equally huge following.
Whether around his home in the ancient city, on the Pillars’ training pitch, during matches or even at social functions, the situation is the same. Ali is idolised to no end. “Pele, Pele, Pele, Pele…” is chanted as he makes his way past a sea of fans who usually swarm on him. It could make the late Brazilian legend Pele, after whom Ali is nicknamed, green with envy.
At 44 years of age, Ali is easily the oldest among all the professional league players in Nigeria. It is a feat which no player has ever attained. Nor would the enviable record be easy to beat and the fact that he leads Pillars out in every game says everything about his staying power.
For one who is idolised on account of his prodigious wizardry on the pitch, Ali also has idols. He found one in the Brazilian Pele. He once idolised younger Cristiano Ronaldo, but not anymore. These days he has found favour with the much younger France international, the recently beleaguered Paul Pogba, who he says “excites me with his midfield play, about passing and aiming for goal.”
Although Ali is fully aware that time will be called on his career someday, he has made provision for what he calls “adequate arrangement” for life after football. “I have always thought of doing business after my career and especially engaging in truck haulage. I have not shifted my focus from that and I am only waiting to go into it,” he says.
But before his retirement, he deserves a national honour; not only as a reward for unrivalled longevity in football, but also for his unalloyed dedication and loyalty to a cause. It is for the foregoing that the committee on the award of national honours to deserving Nigerians should enlist Ali in the next set of awardees. For there is nothing special that the plethora of politicians on the list annually have done in service to the county that Ali has not done much more, notwithstanding that he is a football player.
