Israel Adebajo had always been a sports fanatic and was a member of the Island Club where he played tennis. He was also a founding member of Lagos’s Metropolitan Club. He visited the Racecourse on Lagos Island with his sons to watch horse-racing. He befriended a First Republic (1960-1966) parliamentarian, Alfred Osula, who had been a journalist at the Daily Times, and, from him, he bought land in the Lagos district of Agege with which he built a football stad
ium. Israel would establish his own football club in 1958, having bought Oluwole Philips Football Club, which he transformed into Stationary Stores Football Club (SSFC). He then plowed profits from the company into the new club. At this time, it was only large companies like Leventis, the United Africa Company (UAC), the Nigeria Railway Corporation, and the Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN) that could afford to own football clubs in Nigeria. It was unprecedented for an individual to own a club and have his name and company so closely associated with it as “The Adebajo Babes”.
Israel often came late to games at Onikan Stadium (former King George V Stadium) in Lagos – the then Mecca of Nigerian football – due to a hypertensive condition and nervousness that his team might lose. Borrowing the logo of a Brazilian team of Flamingos, the players of Stationary Stores – nicknamed the “Flaming Flamingos” for igniting pitches with their exciting play – were decked out in a yellow jersey with maroon stripes, and the round logo of “SSFC” with a flamingo emblazoned in the middle of the stripe. They also wore yellow shorts with yellow handkerchiefs hanging around their necks. These colorful outfits added to the glamour and flamboyance of Stationary Stores in the city with the motto: “Eko for Show.” The team played an attractive brand of flowing, fluent, and attacking football that Lagosians quickly embraced. Stores’ main rivals in Lagos were ECN, Julius Berger, and Leventis, as the club started dominating the Lagos Challenge Cup Israel was determined to end Ghana’s dominance of West African football, and Stationary Stores was the first Nigerian team to play in the African Cup of Champion Clubs in 1968. Adebajo was a pioneering Pan-African, employing players from Ghana, Togo, Dahomey (now Benin), and other West African countries. Friendlies were organised with teams like Ghana’s Asante Kotoko. A decade before the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was born in 1975 through the vision of another prominent Nigerian – Adebayo Adedeji – Adebajo was already practising the free movement of labour across the sub-region. The man who washed the team’s jerseys – “Baba Wash and Press” – was himself a Togolese national.
Israel was also a competent, passionate, and generous sports administrator. His career as an administrator was impressive, transferring his solid management skills from his business to the arena of sports. He served on the board of the Lagos Football Association and was treasurer of the Nigerian Football Association (NFA) from 1958 until his death in 1969. The NFA oversaw the building of the National Stadium in Lagos’s Surulere district in 1961. Subsequent Nigerian sports administrators, however, allowed the stadium to fall into an embarrassing state of disrepair, and it closed in 2004.
Adebajo’s era of sports administrators seemed a far cry from today’s largely venal, incompetent, and corrupt crop of administrators running Nigerian sports. He generously imported the special jerseys used by the national football team – the then “Green Eagles” – during the 1968 Olympic qualifiers. In 1965, he had also created the Youth Sports Federation of Apapa (YSFA), consistently championing the cause of youth development.
The all-conquering Stores’ “Flaming Flamingos” that won two Challenge cups in a row in 1967 and 1968 had players that have since become legends of the Nigerian game: acrobatic goalkeepers Peter Fregene and Inua Lawal Rigogo – nicknamed the “Flying Cat” by Ghanaian president, Kwame Nkrumah – ; Tony “World 2” Igwe; Segun “Rock of Gibraltar” Olumodeji; Peter “Eusebio” Anieke; Sam Opone; Muyiwa “Lucky Boy” Oshode; Willie Andrews; Baba Alli; and Mohammed Lawal. Nine members of this team famously represented Nigeria at the 1968 Mexico Olympics, earning a creditable 3-3 draw against Brazil.
The support of Stationary Stores in Lagos was fanatical, and many have compared it to a cult and even a religion. As the most well-supported team in the ethnically cosmopolitan city of Lagos, Stores also sought to unite diverse ethnic and class groups for a common cause in the nation’s then capital, particularly during its own halcyon days, as the Nigerian civil raged between 1967 and 1970.
Israel’s Last Days: So Much To Do, So Little Time
Israel’s death in July 1969 was a shock to his family, friends, and fans. He fell ill on Palm Sunday in April 1969 when he started vomiting. He became increasingly fatigued, his abdomen swelled up, and he was eventually diagnosed as suffering from cirrhosis of the liver; diabetes; gastro-intestinal bleeding; and hepatic failure. A team of doctors – led by Ekpo Eyo and Aderonmi Laja – attended to him. He started working increasingly from home, dictating letters to his private secretary, and going occasionally to the office. As he observed his health deteriorating, Israel – renowned for his meticulousness – went to his lawyer, Adeyanju Osijo, by the end of May 1969 to ask him to start preparing a will.
He signed the will in his NOSS Stores office – witnessed by two staff members – on 25 June: exactly a month before his death. He asked that the date of the will be back-dated to his birthday on 21 January, as this would be his birthday gift to his wives and children. The lawyer kept a copy of the will, and deposited copies with Standard and Barclays banks on the instruction of the testator. On 24 June, one of the sick man’s wives, Irene, organised a Sara (thanksgiving prayer meal) attended by Israel’s brother Luke and some office staff.
Two days later, he visited his wife, Adunni, to consult on naming his last-born child, Adefemi Mofolorunso, born just four days earlier. Advised to seek more specialised treatment abroad, he left Nigeria on 28 June 1969, never to return alive. On the same day as his departure for London, he went personally to Standard Bank in Apapa to procure traveler’s cheques for his trip before leaving. He was admitted to the hospital on arrival for about three weeks, discharged, and re-admitted. He stayed part of the time with his sister Florence Odunsi, who visited him in the hospital every day. Sheila Sherlock – an expert in liver diseases – was the doctor in charge of his care at London’s Royal Free Hospital. She reported that Israel had gone into liver failure and died on the morning of 25 July, having suffered a massive gastro-intestinal hemorrhage.
Adebajo’s funeral was a huge affair, with footballers of Stationary Stores juggling the ball along the route as part of the large cortège accompanying the hearse to the burial site in his country home in Naforija. Musicians composed elegies, with the most famous being juju superstar, Sunny Ade, and his Green Spot Band’s song “Late Israel Adebajo.” Israel was buried near his parents’ graves. A striking large, marble white statue in his image – clad in traditional flowing robes with his signature upright, tall cap and long chain hanging around his neck – was erected above the grave on the first anniversary of his death in July 1970.
Israel’s Legacy: Life Without The Founder
As earlier noted, Israel Adebajo was a polygamist, who had four wives and 14 children. As is typical in such cases once the patriarch departs, the feuding soon begins, as the glue that had kept the family together comes unstuck. A 1971 landmark court case pitched two legal giants against each other in a Clash of the judicial Titans: Kehinde Sofola was Counsel for the defence, while Rotimi Williams was Counsel for the prosecution. Legendary Oxford-trained, Chief Justice of Lagos State, J.I.C. (John Idowu Conrad) Taylor added to the drama, delivering a magisterial judgment that has since been studied in legal classrooms across Nigeria. The crux of the case revolved around one of Israel Adebajo’s wives, Irene’s legal team arguing that her husband was not of sound mind when he made his will. They, therefore requested that the document be declared null and void, arguing that Israel Adebajo had died intestate. Judge Taylor, however, in his final judgment, declared that the document was “the last will of a free and capable testator.” The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, before being dismissed by Chief Justice, Taslim Elias.
Israel Adebajo’s legacy is remarkable, as a pre-independence entrepreneur and founder of the first privately-owned football club in Nigeria. Even at the global level, his achievements were impressive. Though the Fiat-owning Agnelli family bought Juventus Football Club in 1923, television mogul, Silvio Berlusconi took over AC Milan only in 1986. In the Nigerian context, it was only in the 1980s that business tycoons, Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu and Moshood Abiola, established their own football clubs.
