The Nigeria football family woke up to the news Saturday morning, former Super Eagles captain and later coach Christian Chukwu has died.
Chukwu fondly called “Chairman” was one of the Nigeria’s finest centre backs. He won the Africa Cup of Nations in 1980, the first Nigerian captain to lift the AFCON trophy. He later became an assistant coach under Dutch coach Clemen Westerhof in 1994, he took over the Super Eagles in 2002 and lead them to a third-place finish at the 2004 AFCON in Tunisia. He left the post in 2005 after he failed to qualify for the 2006 World Cup in Germany.
In 2019 Chukwu was diagnosed with prostate cancer and the family rallied round for funds to afford him medical treatment abroad. Billionaire Femi Otedola stepped in and bailed him out of predicament.
Last year in an interview Chukwu lamented that after over a decade of leaving the Super Eagles position, the Nigeria Football Federation failed to pay his entitlements. He stated that the “NFF owes dead and living coaches.”
Reacting to his death yesterday his team and bosom friend Segun Odegbami posted on his Facebook page: “Chairman’ Christian Chukwu, MFR, my bosom friend and teammate, one of the greatest football players in Nigeria’s history, has passed on. I just received the news that between 9:00 and 10:00 this morning,”
“Babuje, Emmanuel Okala, MON, gave me the sad news a few minutes ago. May ‘Onyim’ find peace with Our Creator in Heaven and console his family.”
