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There is a chant that echoes through the corridors of Bolton Wanderers' football history — "Jay-Jay Okocha, so good they named him twice." It is a line that perfectly captures the essence of Augustine Azuka Okocha, a footballer whose gifts…

In Nigerian football lore, there are players who were great, and then there is Nwankwo Kanu — a man who was great, nearly lost everything to a silent heart defect, and then became even greater after surviving it. His story is one of the…

Ahmed Musa holds a record that most Nigerian football fans carry in their hearts: he scored both goals in Nigeria's 2–0 victory over Iceland at the 2018 FIFA World Cup, becoming the first Nigerian player to score in two different World…

Ese Brume never set out to fill anyone's shoes. When Blessing Okagbare chose sprints over the long jump at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, the 18-year-old from Ughelli, Delta State, stepped into the sandpit and won gold. It was, in…

On a hot July evening in Eugene, Oregon in 2022, Oluwatobiloba Ayomide Amusan did something no Nigerian — indeed no African — had ever done in an athletics event. She won gold at the World Athletics Championships in the 100 metres hurdles,…

For more than a decade, Blessing Okagbare was Nigeria's most recognisable athlete — a sprinting and long jumping force who could beat anyone on her best days, whose 100m time of 10.79 seconds stood as the African record for years, and whose…

At the 1998 FIFA World Cup in France, in the Group D match between Nigeria and Spain, Sunday Oliseh received the ball 35 yards from goal and hit it — first time, with the outside of his right foot — into the top corner of the net with a…

Paul Onuachu is a striker who does not make sense on paper until you watch him play. Standing at 6 feet 7 inches tall, he is physically among the most imposing footballers on the planet. Defenders expect an old-fashioned target man who wins…

Taiwo Awoniyi's career is one of football's most instructive redemption stories. Liverpool signed him as a teenager in 2015, but for six years he could not get a work permit to play in England, spending that entire period on loan across…

Ola Aina's story carries an element that resonates beyond the usual football narrative: he is a player who had a choice. Born in London to Nigerian parents, Aina was eligible to represent England and trained in Chelsea's academy system —…