The death of veteran football tactician Adegboye Onigbinde, has brought another pall of grief on Nigeria’s sporting community.

Onigbinde died at the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospitals Complex, just a short distance from his ancestral home in Modakeke, Osun State on Monday evening.

His death came amid a sombre period for Nigerian sport, following closely on the heels of the passing of Chamberlain Nnamdi Dunkwu as well as two respected sports journalists, Niyi Oyeleke and Tonex Chukwu.

For Onigbinde, football was not merely a profession, but a defining passion of his adult life.

For several decades, Onigbinde played his role as a coach, administrator and mentor in Nigeria and beyond, leaving an enduring imprint on the country’s football development.

Though,  not much is known of Onigbinde as a footballer, but he was an all-rounder in the coaching business.

After obtaining his Grade Two Teachers’ Course at St. Luke’s College, Ibadan, in 1961 Onigbinde began his coaching in the then Western Region, travelling from school to school and from town to town to impart football knowledge to young players.

In an interview with Sports Village Square in 2022, the late coach traced the turning point of his career to a chance encounter in the early 1960s with Nigeria’s legendary footballer Teslim Balogun.

Onigbinde regarded Balogun, popularly known as “Thunder”—as the greatest footballer Nigeria had ever produced.

According to him, it was Balogun who set him on the path to coaching.

“I was a Grade III teacher when he spotted me in Ife and advised me to take up football,” Onigbinde recalled.

“Coincidentally, I went to Ibadan to do my Grade Two Teachers’ Course at St. Luke’s College in 1961 and became the captain of the team.”

At that time, Balogun, who was working alongside the national team coach Moshe-Jerry Beit haLevi, organised a Grade B coaching course under the Western Regional Council of the Nigeria Football Association.

The course took place at the Liberty Stadium, now Obafemi Awolowo Stadium from June 26 to July 16, 1961.

Among those trained were several individuals who would later shape Nigerian football, including Onigbinde, Niyi Akande, Ayo Adeniji and Godwin Etemeke.

Onigbinde continued his professional development years later when he participated in another coaching programme organised by Balogun in March 1969. Among the participants in that course was Yinka Okeowo, who would later serve as secretary of the Nigeria Football Association.

With those formative experiences, Onigbinde found his lifelong vocation.

His early club career included managing the now-defunct Water Corporation FC of Ibadan before he rose to prominence with Shooting Stars Sports Club, one of Nigeria’s most historic clubs.   Under his guidance, the Ibadan-based IICC Shooting Stars reached the final of the 1984 African Cup of Champions Clubs, a major milestone in the club’s continental journey.

The same year, Onigbinde also led the national team, then known as the Green Eagles, to the final of the 1984 Africa Cup of Nations, where Nigeria finished runners-up.

His career later extended beyond Nigeria’s borders. In the early 2000s, he worked as a technical instructor and youth coach with the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association, helping to develop the country’s U-17 programme.

Onigbinde left that position in late 2001 after assembling a promising youth squad that competed against local professional teams.

Shortly afterwards, he returned to Nigeria to take charge of the Super Eagles and led Nigeria to the 2002 FIFA World Cup, becoming the first indigenous coach to guide the country to the global tournament.

Beyond trophies and statistics, colleagues and players remember Onigbinde as a disciplinarian, a thinker and a committed teacher of the game.

For a man whose journey began as a classroom teacher and was transformed by a chance encounter with a football legend, his life story became inseparable from the development of Nigerian football itself.

With his passing, Nigerian sport loses not only a pioneer coach but also a living bridge to an earlier era when the foundations of the country’s football culture were being laid.

Speaking with The Guardian, the Proprietor of Cable Football Academy, Coach Edwin Onovwotafe, a product of the National Institute of Sports (NIS), Lagos, said: “We have lost yet another guru in football.
I met Onigbinde on few occasions, and I must say he impacted a lot  within the industry.

He recalled one of their encounters when Onigbinde returned from the FIFA World Cup in 2002.

“Onigbinde led a club from the south west to the newly constructed Oghara Stadium for a league match then, and his mere presence attracted fans from neibouring towns like Mosogar, Jesse, Ologbo, Sapele and even Warri to Oghara. Then, I was already in coaching business, and I drew a lot of inspirations from Onigbinde’s calmness and composure on the bench,” Onovwotafe told The Guardian.

As tributes continue to flow, other stakeholders who spoke on various sports radio programmes monitored in Lagos, say the legacies of Onigbinde will endure through the many football professionals whose careers and lives he touched.