Rashidi Yekini
English Premiership League scout, Latif Alnasaar has expressed dismay
over the last resting place of the late national striker, Rasidi Yekini.
Alnassar, who was among the mourners at Yekini's country home in Irra,
Oyun Local Government Area of Kwara State remarked that the choice of
burial site for the goal poacher lowered his international esteem.
The EPL scout, who is presently in Ibadan with FRENAGE-Progression
International Soccer Academy (FPISA), fumed over how one of Africa’s
greatest players was buried arguing that his resting place should be a
monument site where visitors and coming generations will be visiting.
The former Los Angeles Galaxy player said the body of other great
players of Yekini’s repute who died in western world were preserved in a
monumental-like burial site, where it easy and accessible for anyone to
visit and pay homage.
“This man was a respectable football icon throughout the world based on
what he had done in African soccer scene while alive, so I think he
deserved more befitting burial than this. And this place he was buried
is damned too remote,” said the UEFA licensed coach who was in Nigeria
to head technical crew of FPISA
He however, called on Nigerian football authority to do something about
the burial ground of the man who helped Super Eagles win the 1994
African Nations Cup, where he also topped the goal charts.
Meanwhile, the financier of the last youth side Yekini trained with
before his terminal exit, Janata FC, Hakeem Sanni expressed his team’s
sincere appreciation to the 1993 African Footballer of the Year.
Sanni said Yekini was a God-sent to his club that recently won the All
Eastern FA Cup which is organised annually in Ibadan by an Igbo group.
“It was Rashidi Yekini’s gesture that motivated our boys to win this first major laurel in the ten-year history of the team.”
Yekini on many occasions, according to the youth club financier, had
registered youth clubs for local competitions so that they can measure
their level of improvement but always warned them not to publicize any
assistance he rendered to them.
A sports loving politician, Seyi Makinde in the interim, has described
the death of Yekini as horrific and tragic and charged the federal
government to name a national monument after the former African
footballer of the year.
Makinde explained that it is high time Nigerian leaders from local,
state and federal levels set aside trust fund managed by men of proven
integrity to cater for Nigerians who have served this country with
patriotism and courageously. ‘It is difficult to believe that despite
the much publicized traumatized life Yekini lived before his tragic end,
no government not even the Nigeria Football Federation showed interest
or came to rescue the gangling striker from the strange ailment.
Meanwhile, former West Africa Football Union (WAFU) President and
member of the Nigeria Football Association, Chief Jonathan Ogufere, has
described Rashidi Yekini’s “exploits as yet unmatched in the annals of
Nigeria football”
Chief Ogufere who is president of Association of Sports Veterans,
Nigeria was speaking in Lagos in reaction to the passing away of one of
Nigeria’s greatest footballers.
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