I am dropping the words I am dropping now as tears are dropping profusely and profusely from my eyes dripping with the flavour of complete pain. Peter Fregene, Nigeria’s longest-serving goal-keeper, is the cause of the very painful pain my lyrical eyes are marking my present moment with. It is an ugly moment of ugliness that Peter Fregene’s death has induced in me.

The very great goalkeeper of our very dear, dear Green Eagles of yester-decades and yester-decades of then years and years of our fabulous times, died recently after long seasons of prolonged sickness that slowly shredded him with the evil scissors of his evil shredder.

Some weeks back the information reached me that Peter Fregene’s burial events would happen from November 27, to November 30, 2024 in Sapele the once fabulous place of fabulous places whose decades of decades are no longer its decades of decades of memories refusing to fade from my succulent memory. Oh, my autobiographical memory! How succulent you still are and are still!

I assured my informer who resides in the diaspora that I would attend the events as the late Peter Fregene meant (and still means even in death) so much to us Sapele people and brought-ups and denizens.

Indeed, those members of my generation, and of his, who knew him intoto and who played the game of the then taut round leather with him before he left us behind after he hit national and international stardoms, will always remember the fallen master of goal-keeping and goal-tendering, who was equally a servant-master and master-servant of Nigerian sports. Unfortunately, I won’t be at the final event tomorrow at the Sapele Township Stadium as I wasn’t at the service of songs at Okotie-Eboh Grammar School sports ground on Wednesday, November 27 to mark the beginning of his final journey from our earth plane.

Professor Omajuwa Igho Natufe, a dashing left-winger of the glorious Amukpe All Stars Football Club of Sapele in the then years, the terrific 1960s, would not be pleased with me. He, among other distinguished tappers of the tough round leather with Peter Fregene expected me, among others, to represent all of them in Europe and United States of America who for obvious reasons could not and would not come to say their final goodbye to the flying cat. Professor Omajuwa Igho Natufe, now a classical Political Science scholar of extreme radical bent, would accept my water-tight excuse for being absent. (In any case, my younger brother, a former Nigerian international of high rank, will mark his presence (and mine in absentia!)

I am delivering an important lecture tomorrow. I am rushing to Benin City from my far-away environment/base outside Edo State to get ready for the paper which I am still touching and re-touching. I was contacted, commissioned, to do the presentation live well before the burial programme of the late “Rubber Man of Africa” was released. I prepared for the lecture which I tried to complete with the gift of competence God grants me only very, very late yesterday – although it is yet to be given a final mark of authoritative authority.

I have been too drained to go to Sapele on the Benin-Sapele road of evil that will not curve back to its good, very good, norm of yester-years in the nearest future. How dare this committed columnist always committed to frank friendship dare the dreaded and dreadful road unless he was ready to embarrass the planners of the event to whom and which he had committed himself and his commitment?

Peter Fregene was a boy, a man, a person, an athlete, a footballer, a goal-keeper of destiny. Let my memory speak from its long span.Peter Fregene was in my small boyish or little boyhood consciousness far back into time. He belonged to our Oguanja footballers – pupils, boys and young men who graced the sports grounds of Baptist, St. Luke, Council, Academy, and Association Primary Schools’ sports grounds respectively at different times – to do our hard round leather business come rain or sunshine, especially in the afternoons and evenings after our school hours. He and more than several others some of whom had since predeceased him were already making waves in Sapele and environs. But he was not the best chap, the best footballer, and goal-keeper then. I remember very vividly goal-keepers Abu Malaya the ebony black, handsome and lanky Igbo goal-keeper of Amukpe All Stars, Sammy Sparkles of Sapele Football Club who were known well before Peter Fregene’s bright stars brightened him.

Those two were acclaimed and applauded as better than the flying cat of later years. There was also Peter Aghante (Ben Bella), his elder brother Daniel Aghante (Black Arrow), who became popular as a local and national referee, Odinaka and Hamilton, two Igbo brothers who at different times kept goal for St. Francis School, Sapele. Joseph Okotie of Baptist School, the same school Peter Aghante attended, was also a phenomenal goal-keeper. All the listed goal-keepers were in their respective styles of goal-keeping gift and attitude more seemingly outstanding than Peter Fregene.

But it was Peter Fregene’s destiny, as already alluded to steal, to capture, the crucial limelight from each and all of them. Peter Fregene was the daring, fearless, courageous, well endowed cat that was always flying in the air and from there to the ground, muddy or not muddy, to catch, to punch, to embrace the ball that must not enter the net, his net, through his own shortcomings or errata.

At that time in question he had one innovation: any forward or player who dared to contest in the air or on the ground the ball with him in order to toss it onto goal and Peter Fregene’s net was a goner who would end up as a goner that was a goner. Dare to dare Peter Fregene – and he would scratch and crash you out of the match for good. His goal-keeper’s zone was his goal-keeper’s zone when Peter Fregene was Peter Fregene.

As my adult autobiographical memory is writing this, my boyhood memory plays back this scene: Macaulay Otire, an inside forward of Amukpe All-Stars dashed to Peter Fregene’s territory in the hope of scoring a sure goal. It was an occasion of a spectacular match between a Benin team (Vipers?) and Amukpe. Governor Samuel Osaigbovo of the Mid-West had recently ‘imported’ the flying cat just for the match at that time, we were schooled, that aspects of NFA’s rules and regulations allowed ‘importation’ of players. The match was played in Benin at the King’s Square. It was a cup final between Benin and Sapele. As Macaulay Otire made his dashing run to and into Peter Fregene’s territory, what the latter did entered Sapele football lore thereafter.

Peter Fregene scoured tigerishly over his out-of-bounds territory to contain Macaulay Otire’s daringness. A piercing wail came from the daring forward who was a famed member of the Green Eagles at that time. Peter Fregene’s ground-drive caused havoc, as we gleaned from the folktale, to Maculay Otire’s groin and testes. He was carried off and never returned to continue the match.

Long after the match which Benin won Macaulay Otire was blamed for under-rating Peter Fregene, the “small boy goal-keeper” who ‘pensioned’ the Green Eagles maestro. How come he did not know that the “small boy goal-keeper” was on tiger-snake kind of drugs? That match made Peter Fregene and snatched him totally from Sapele.

Tales upon tales of good sports deeds were circulated concerning Peter Fregene. The other Sapele goal-keepers seemingly went into oblivion. And I can picture now our Council School goal-keeper Harry Fombo who wished to out-class Peter Fregene and no longer Peter Aghante and Abu Malaya. I don’t know where Harry Fombo is now, but like many of us who are scattered in different places of the globe and moved on to different endeavours.

I have said what I have said so far but with some passionate and emotional intensity as Peter Fregene, the well celebrated Safarian and gem and denizen of our sporting city and boyhood is leaving us – or has left us. My feelings are profoundly profound, I don’t really know how to express them. Or have I expressed them intensely and exciting enough? I don’t know. I can’t answer the question. All I can conclude with is this: I am full of anguish but I say that my anguish should turn into spiritual joy as Peter Fregene rests soundly in God’s bosom after his pain and gloomier end.
Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.