Desire Oparanozie: The Best Super Falcons Captain

Dear Ugochi

Though your tenure as the Captain of Nigeria’s Women Senior team was a short one but your remarkable achievements and leadership traits to stand for the people you represent regardless of whose ox is gored are top-notch.

Your decision to retire today, perhaps psychologically started in 2021, when the Nigeria Football Federation let you down by excluding your name from the list of players for the Turkish Women’s Cup two years ago.

You must have felt displeased and irritated that the country you gave so much will despise you for exercising your right to freedom of expression, Your omission from the 23-man list to Turkey was a bone of contention that rocked the sporting fraternity in Nigeria and it raised eyebrows from football loving Nigerians, who criticized the Amaju Pinnick led board.

Former Super Eagles player, Sunday Oliseh, described the act as criminal, You were also stripped of the team’s captainship as a form of demotion for speaking the truth.

You were in fine form for French topflight side Dijon, but NFF decided to call players, who had not played any competitive match for any club for over 11 months to make a cowardly statement.

We won’t forget your solitary strike in the 86th minute against Cameroon in the final of the 2016 Africa Women’s Cup of Nations in Yaoundé which gave us the victory in the presence of President Paul Biya.

It all started in 2019, when Thomas Dennerby named you as the captain after an international friendly against Canada in Spain, You scored the first goal in the encounter, and after the match, the French coach told newsmen that he chose you because of your discipline and good character.

That decision settles the rift of captainship that occurred between Rita Chikwelu and Onome Ebi at the AWCON Finals in Ghana, but unconfirmed reports say Glass House preferred Onome

Later that year, after losing 3-0 to Germany at Stade des Alpes in GGrenoble at the FIFA World Cup in France, despite the defeat, you led the Super Falcons to the best outing since 1999, when they reached the quarter-finals but your stance on fair play and insistence that the team gets the financial entitlements they were owed by the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) three years earlier was the reason why NFF used their corrupt power over you.

Furthermore, in an audio message that went viral, you disclosed that the NFF only offered to settle the financial entitlements of players who were present in France but you refused, insisting that all the players who were owed must be paid, which they did.

Before then the team had protested over bonuses in 2016 in Abuja when they stormed the National Assembly after winning the 10th edition of the African Women’s Championship held in Cameroon but it was never on record that it yielded results.

In Lagos at the 2019 Ladies In Sports conference held at the Eko Hotels and Suites, you displayed again your selfless and courageous attitude when you became the first person to ask the NFF that the women’s senior national team be paid the same amount of money as the men’s national team, a demand, you said, you never regretted, even in presence of the then NFF First Vice- President, Barrister Seyi Akinwummi, but you stood your ground for equality.

Even after two years of being debarred from the National team, your return sparked massive jubilations among the football faithful, as it was obvious nobody really could fill your position in the National team, Even when you were right, you still apologized to the hierarchy of the football house.

These acts have set you apart as the best Captain the Super Falcons has ever had, none was close to putting their career on the line for the sake of the rest of the team.

I believe you were destined to fly as your name Ugochi means God’s Eagle in Ibo though you didn’t fly with the Super Eagles, you flew with the Super Falcons.

©Mudashiru Shittu