Professor Anugweje urges Nigerian Footballers to emulate Ezeji

University of Port Harcourt’s Director of Sports, Professor Kenneth Anugweje, has priased Nigerian league legend, Victor Ezeji, for his ability to acquire a University degree while also pursuing a career in the top flight football.

Professor Anugweje, a board member of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) and one of the country’s foremost sports medicine experts, says sports men must do all they can to get solid education because it is something they could always fall back on retirement.

Victor Ezeji was a student at the University of Port Harcourt between the 1997/98 and the 2000 session and also featured for the school football team, which was at the time managed and coached by Anugweje.

The Professor reveals that Ezeji was indeed a smart and gifted footballer and spoke glowingly of Ezeji’s time at the institution.

He said, “ While he was here, he was a key member of the University football team.

“The climax of his membership of the team was at the West African University games in 1999 at the Universte Du Benin. He was also in the Nigerian team that went to Mallorca in Spain for the World University Games.

“All through his stay here and for the Nigerian team, he emerged highest goal scorer even when I played him out of his natural striking position. I saw that he was able to galvanise the team, so I gave him a free role.”

Ezeji is an accounts graduate and according to Anugweje, he could take on a management role in football or also succeed at any other endeavour outside the world of football.

“I didn’t receive any complaint about him from his faculty and he graduated when he was supposed to graduate. He did not drop any courses, he did not drop any class,” he said.