Growing up in Oshodi inspired me to become sports commentator — Guerrero

Multiple award-winning international MC and football commentator, Babajide Olojede, popularly known as Babajide Guerrero, in this interview with EBENEZER BAJELA, talks about his childhood as an aspiring football player, challenges in Nigerian football, Team Nigeria’s poor outing in Paris, and more

Are you a passionate follower of sports?

Yes, I am. I have been the matchday presenter of the Nigeria Premier Football League for the past two years. Mainly, I do commentary and football presentations for the World Cup and the Nations Cup. I was on the call for the last Nations Cup, where I presented and analysed some live matches on terrestrial television.

How has the journey been?

In the beginning, it was very tough, and it gets tougher because each phase comes with new challenges. For example, when I started, acceptance was a big issue because a lot of people were struggling to get used to my kind of style because I wasn’t a known name at the time. Convincing people that I could do this was a bit difficult, and when they started to accept me, it became a problem of challenging the old guards, but I think it’s been a phase of growing and getting better.

What prompted your decision to become a sports commentator?

I didn’t find myself in this trade by accident, because I didn’t have a job, because I didn’t go to school, or because someone talked me into it. I have always liked it, and I followed the World Cup with the USA ‘94 my first; it was glamorous for me because of what it meant to Nigerians at the time. My first television appearance was at the defunct DBN. What inspired me was that I grew up in Oshodi, a part of the country where everyone was trying to do crime and the irregular stuff, but I wanted to be different and make my parents proud. I said to myself that if I couldn’t play football, I could still do something around sports, and I started developing myself by listening to some top-class presenters over the years, and I picked up a lot of skills from how they delivered their work.

Do you agree that the Paris 2024 was one of Nigeria’s worst outings at the Olympics?

(Cuts in) It is not one of the worst but the worst outing we’ve ever had.

Sometimes you kind of feel that whenever people are happy, in a way it rubs off, and sport has a way of bringing happiness to the people. The performance of the athletes at the Olympics is a reflection of how bad things are currently in the country, where it seems like nothing is working. Unfortunately for the Sports Minister, John Enoh, he came in at the wrong time because the timing of his appointment is in tandem with this absolute failure, and he has his work cut out.

Tobi Amusan broke two records in one night, and that already is a definite gold medal. We were expecting at least a bronze medal from her, but she couldn’t achieve it, and at the next Olympics she would probably be 30 or 31. The outing was a mess, and it ranks as the worst outing we’ve ever had.

Earlier on, you said you wanted to do something related to football since you couldn’t play it. Did you at any point play football?

I wanted to play some football for myself, and I tried that a couple of times, but you remember when we were growing up playing football and your parents saw you? You just knew the moment you entered the house your own had finished because they would kill you. If it is to pray to God or do ‘juju’, you have to start doing that. That was my case because when I was growing up, I saw my father as someone I couldn’t talk to because he was big on education, and anytime I saw his car from afar, I would jet off the street and wash my legs because if he caught me, I was finished.

I wanted to be a footballer, and I was quite decent. I played for my department in UNILAG, and I also played in the Principal Cup while in secondary school. I was going to go professional, but it was either education for my family. Things are quite easy for this generation, unlike it was for us back then. That’s why I said to myself that if I couldn’t play football, I would have to do it the other way.

What was your favourite position?

I played as an attacking midfielder or a centre forward. My coaches played me as a striker whenever we didn’t have someone to play in that position because I was very fast, even though I was a bit small. In a situation where we have a big defender, I don’t play the centre-forward role; rather, I play behind the striker. I can say I was a top striker, and I scored a lot of goals for my department before one guy just came and broke all my records.

Having watched the Super Eagles in the 90s, how do you feel watching this current team?

It’s sad and disheartening because we are not Ben 10 Nigerians; we are Nigerians that watched good football, the type that would stay up all night to watch USA ’94, Atlanta ‘96, and France ’98 and run around when we scored goals. I was at the National Stadium in Surulere when Julius Aghahowa scored the equaliser and winner against Senegal in the 2000 quarterfinals of the Africa Cup of Nations; the memories run deep in my soul. Talent is never a problem for Nigeria, but structural deficiency lacks efficiency. In France, there is something called the Clairefontaine; it is the institution that churns out talents. If you want to play football for the national team, no player played for the national team in France that didn’t go to the institution. Talk about Thierry Henry, Zinedine Zidane, Didier Deschamp, and so many of them, the team that won the 1998 World Cup; most of them were graduates of Clairefontaine, and it is the same thing that the Senegalese have adopted. They have their school of football as well. So, it is a big problem that we have not been able to use our talents very well, and that’s why there was no medal at the Olympics and we couldn’t win the Nations Cup. How can we be a team with the most podium finishes at the Nations Cup, and most of those finishes are bronze medals?

Football has evolved, and in its evolution comes creation as well. There are a lot of problems with our football. First is the league, the Nigeria Football Federation, and so many others, and trust me, this is a conversation we can have from now till tomorrow. Asking me how I am feeling, I will tell you I feel so bad because I witnessed the glory days when the team was spoilt for options and there was brotherly love, but now all we have in the team are players forming big boys. I don’t think we can have the glory days back, but what I do think is that we should acclimatise with the time and see what we can salvage in our football.

The AFCON qualifiers are two weeks from now, and the Eagles are without a coach yet we are expected to name a squad for the games. What is your reaction to this?

The NFF will announce the players by themselves since we don’t have a coach. It is appalling, but this is due to inefficient structure. You keep wondering why they appointed Finidi George when they knew they were setting him up for failure; maybe he didn’t do some things right or didn’t handle some issues well, and that has made him the coach with the shortest spell in our football history. Nigeria is not a small nation in football because this is a country with the highest FIFA rankings in Africa.

We’ve heard of several foreign coaches being linked to the Eagles job, but whomever it is that is going to take over the job, they need to do it as fast as possible. In Germany, there is a succession plan, and they would have announced the next manager ahead, but that is not the case here, and it is still about the inefficiency of the structure.

If you have a time machine and you are to bring back just one player from the past, who would that be?

That will be Sunday Oliseh because he is the fine balance of what the team lacks at the moment. Nobody is perfect, and maybe he has his flaws, but Oliseh commanded the respect that Ahmed Musa presently commands, the typical skill that Austin Okocha had. He had it, and I am not talking about the flair or the leadership that Uche Okechukwu or Stephen Keshi had. He was not the dribbling kind of player, but when it comes to technique, you have to give it to him because he was a good reader of the game.