Author: Olaojo Aiyegbayo

 

I watched a Creative Mornings {Richmond}  video yesterday by an artist called Noah Scalin. It is an interesting talk which I would recommend that you watch if you have a spare 18 minutes. The best bit of his talk for me was at the end and it is about 47 seconds long which you MUST watch. I have extracted the 47-second video clip using TubeChop (below).

Scalin talks about his preferred metaphor of creativity in this clip. He isn’t a fan of ‘creativity as a well‘ metaphor which requires the individual dipping into the creative well within and drawing from it. “I am running dry {of ideas}” will be the language of a person who holds a “creativity as a well” metaphor. Scalin suggests the use of ‘creativity as snowballs’ as an alternative metaphor.

My last blog post was two months ago. This year my blog outputs have been infrequent because I have devoted a lot of my time and effort to researching and writing longform pieces. One of my creative 2015 goals was to publish at least one longform piece and I have managed to publish two – the first is about ‘Pele, Arthur Ashe and the 1976 Nigerian military coup’ while the second one is on ‘Pele and the Nigerian civil war’.  I am Nigerian by birth hence my interest in telling stories about the country’s sporting and political history. These stories were written to appeal not just Nigerians but also to non-Nigerians. The responses to the pieces from both groups have been overwhelmingly positive.

“The official season starts actually with the famous (and still mysterious) tour of Africa. A tour so full of stories that there is no clear boundary between legend and fact.” Professor Guilherme Nascimento — Author of Almanac of FC Santos.

The Brazilian club, Santos, embarked on a money-making African Football tour in January 1969. The itinerary included exhibition matches in The Congo, Nigeria, Mozambique, Ghana, and Algeria. Pele, the world’s best football player at the time, was a Santos player and the star attraction on this tour. He got crowds into the stadium and enabled Santos to charge high appearance fees for their exhibition matches. Fans wanted to see him play against their teams and were willing to pay for that privilege.

The Lagos Match

Santos arrived at the Lagos International Airport on Sunday morning, January 26, 1969. They were scheduled to play their exhibition match against the Green Eagles, Nigeria’s national team, that afternoon at the Lagos City Stadium. 28-year-old Pele was received by Nigerian football officials and journalists eager to welcome him to the country. Santos arrived in Lagos on the back of a 3–2 defeat in Kinshasa to Congo’s national team — the Leopards.

The Lagos match was arranged by the Nigeria Football Association who paid Santos about £11000 (Nigerian pound sterling) to play against the Green Eagles. The Nigerian pound was the official national currency until it was replaced by the Naira in January 1973. It was equal in value to the British pound sterling. There was an editorial in the Nigerian Daily Times debating whether this was a justified expense during an ongoing civil war in the country.

Chief A.B. Osula, vice-Chairman of the Nigeria Football Association, argued that the cost to bring Santos to Lagos was a bargain. He said, at a press conference, that “when one considers the worth of the club internationally, the money we will pay them is comparatively small.” He explained that the match was arranged for the benefit of the fans and the national team. It provided Nigerians the opportunity to watch world-class players like Pele. The match would also spur Nigerian footballers to emulate the high standards displayed by Santos’ players.

The match between Santos and the Green Eagles ended 2–2. Muyiwa Oshode and Baba Alli scored the Green Eagles’ goals while Pele got Santos’ two goals. The Lagos spectators rose up to applaud Pele’s goals.

Nigerian officials officiated the match and the Santos’ medical officer, Dr Rodriguez, complimented the quality of the officiating team as the best Santos had experienced so far on their African tour. He said, “We shall commend the referee and his linesmen to FIFA.”

Santos left Nigeria for Mozambique the next day to play an exhibition match.

The Benin (Midwest) Match

Isaac Okonjo, Chairman of the Midwest Sports Council, had called a press conference in Benin on Thursday, January 16, 1969. He announced the formation of the Santos Midwest Match Committee which was charged with the task of raising funds for Santos’ match in Benin. Okonjo had travelled to Lagos the previous week to see Mr Geoffery Amachree, Chairman of the Nigeria Football Association, about bringing Santos to Benin for an exhibition match. He told Amachree that his council could only afford to pay Santos £6000 instead of the £11000 which the Nigeria Football Association was paying Santos for the Lagos match. Amachree agreed to contact Santos on behalf of the Midwest Sports Council to enquire if the club would be interested in playing in Benin on Monday, January 27 for £6000. Santos was in Congo at the time.

The Midwest Sports Council’s reasons for arranging the match was to entertain the Midwest football-loving public who would get the opportunity to see the best football player and club in the world. Also, it would provide the Midwest players the opportunity to compete against elite players. Some of the Santos players, including Pele, would go on to win the World Cup the following year in Mexico with the Brazilian national team.

Okonjo announced at a press conference in Benin on Saturday, January 25 that the Santos match planned for January 27 was off. Santos had only committed to playing one match in Nigeria — Lagos. It wasn’t possible to accommodate another Nigerian match in their busy tour schedule. He said there was no “possibility to bring them here.”

He would call another press conference two days later to announce that Santos had changed its decision and agreed to play the Midwest team on February 5. This was the same day (January 27) that Santos left Lagos for Mozambique. He told reporters that match tickets would go on sale later that day in front of all post offices and major shops throughout the state.

Santos sent a cable to the Midwest Sports Council on Saturday, February 1 from Mozambique to request that the Benin match be changed from Wednesday, February 5 to Tuesday, February 4. Santos flew to Benin airport from Lagos on the morning of February 4. The Santos team and officials paid a courtesy visit to the Military Governor of the Midwest, Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Ogbemudia, as well as the Oba of Benin upon their arrival in the city.

The match was scheduled for a 3.30pm kick-off, but Benin’s Ogbe stadium was opened from 10am. This was a showcase match befitting the new stadium (opened in December 1968) which had cost the state government £70,000 to build. The stadium had a 10,000 spectator capacity. It was full by 2pm and there were lots of people who were stuck outside the stadium unable to get in. Football fans came from neighbouring states; some even came from as far as Lagos. These were fans who had missed Santos’ match against the Green Eagles and didn’t want to miss out the second time.

The Santos players were presented with gifts of wooden-carved walking sticks by a Midwest Sports Council official just before the match kick-off. Ogbemudia celebrated the occasion by wearing a sombrero — a Mexican hat.

Santos won the match 2–1 against the determined but limited Midwest team. Pele failed to score, to the disappointment of the spectators. Edu and Negreiros got Santos’ goals while Okere scored a consolation goal for the Midwest team. The three goals were scored in the first half. Santos returned to Lagos as soon as the match ended en route to Accra, Ghana for the next exhibition match.

A Nigerian Observer journalist, in his post-match analysis, reported that “for the first time since I began my sports reporting career, I saw a master footballer at work; I saw Pele play the ball with grace and on several occasions, he made our defence stars look like new-comers to big-time soccer.”

The Nigerian Ceasefire Legend

The story of how Pele and Santos stopped the Nigerian civil war for 48 hours in 1969 is a popular one. It resulted in the two warring factions {Nigeria and Biafra} putting aside their differences for a couple of days for Santos to play in the country. The Nigerian civil war was fought to prevent Biafra (south-eastern Nigeria) from seceding from the rest of the country.

There are several versions of the ceasefire story on the Internet. One version states that the match took place in 1967 while another claims it was in 1969. There are reports that the match was played in Lagos and there are also accounts that it was played in Benin.

The ceasefire story is a legend, despite the reports of this story on websites like CNN, Time, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Goal.com, Wikipedia, Globoesporte.com, etc. There is no reported Nigerian evidence of this story. Two key Nigerian newspapers — Nigerian Daily Times (Lagos) and Nigerian Observer (Benin) — were researched for this piece. There was no mention of a civil war ceasefire for a Santos match in the 1969 issues of these two newspapers. Both papers extensively covered Santos’ two matches in Nigeria thus making them credible sources.

The reason why some versions of the ‘supposed’ ceasefire story state 1967 could be attributed to an error in Pele’s 1977 autobiography {My Life and the Beautiful Game}. He said in the book that he visited Lagos in 1967 with Santos, but he and Santos didn’t visit Lagos until 1969. Pele travelled a lot with Santos in the sixties so it is no surprise that he got the dates mixed up. It is interesting that Pele didn’t mention the ‘supposed’ ceasefire story in his 1977 book and yet, he does in his 2007 autobiography {Pele: The Autobiography}. He recalls the match taking place at Lagos in 1969. The Benin match isn’t mentioned in either of the books.

It is also assumed in some ceasefire accounts that the Midwest Governor, Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Ogbemudia, opened the Sapele Bridge to enable Biafrans travel from Biafra into Benin to watch the match. Actually, the toll bridge was specifically opened on match day so that fans wouldn’t have to incur extra charges to watch the match not for Biafrans to have access to the match.

It is unlikely that any Biafran would have dared to travel from Biafra (south-east of Nigeria) to any of the two Santos matches. The fear of detention or execution by Federal soldiers would have deterred even the most passionate Biafran football fan. It also didn’t help that four days before the Benin match, a Biafran aircraft bombed a village, Obagie, eight miles from Benin. Four farmers were killed in the air raid and several were injured. This Midwest bombing would have made any ceasefire truce between the Nigerian Government and Biafra unlikely for Santos’ match in Benin. The Midwest Governor didn’t mention a ceasefire with Biafra in his account about the Benin match written in his ‘Eighteen Months of Stewardship’ report. This was published a month after the match.

Guilherme Guarche, Santos historian and Coordinator of Santos’ Memory and Statistics Centre, stated on the club’s website in early 2015 that the original source of the 1969 ceasefire story was a 1990 Placar magazine article on Pele by Michel Laurence, a French-Brazilian journalist. This story is mentioned briefly in the article as one of the interesting incidents that occurred during Pele’s football career.

“I’m not sure it’s completely true,” Pele said in his 2007 book about the 48-hour ceasefire story, “But the Nigerians certainly made sure the Biafrans wouldn’t invade Lagos while we were there.” He recalled “a huge military presence on the streets” and protection by the army and police during their stay in Nigeria.

He also said in his book that the Santos’ business manager assured the players that the Nigerian civil war would be stopped for their exhibition match and it wouldn’t be a problem for the authorities.

Pele, however, doesn’t raise his doubts about the ceasefire story during his 2011 interview with CNN. He reinforced the ceasefire legend in this interview.

Excerpted CNN transcript for the 2011 interview:

PELE: Yes, that’s — I feel proud of that. Because, you know, with my team, Santos — this you have in the film, my biography — we stop war. Because the people were so crazy for football — they love football, they stop the war to see Santos play in Africa.
COREN: Yes, you are referring to 1967, when the cease-fire —
PELE: Exactly.
COREN: — was announced in Nigeria for 48 hours so that both warring factions could watch you play in Lagos. I mean, that is just phenomenal.
PELE: All the Africans play — It is different — because we didn’t expect that. The same what I used to say, when we travel, where we stay, we try to give always good message. You know? This is a big responsibility, but I trust God.

Pele’s global status, as well as the location of the incident (a civil war ravaged African country — Nigeria), made the ceasefire story believable. If any sports personality could stop a civil war in an African country in the sixties then it would be Pele. The only problem with the Nigerian civil war ceasefire story is that it isn’t true.

 

38 Then Saul gave David his own armour—a bronze helmet and a coat of mail.39 David put it on, strapped the sword over it, and took a step or two to see what it was like, for he had never worn such things before.

“I can’t go in these,” he protested to Saul. “I’m not used to them.” So David took them off again. 40 He picked up five smooth stones from a stream and put them into his shepherd’s bag. Then, armed only with his shepherd’s staff and sling, he started across the valley to fight the Philistine. 1 Samuel 17:38-40

I have blogged about the story of David, Saul and Goliath in past but want to explore this story from a different angle. This post was inspired by a recent conversation I had with a friend. Before David confronted Goliath in a duel, he had a conversation with Saul, the King of the Israel. Every Israelite soldier was scared to fight Goliath despite Saul’s reward of riches and his daughter’s hand in marriage. Saul, himself, was unwilling to fight Goliath. It was in this atmosphere of fear that David, a young shepherd boy, stepped up to be Israel’s champion against the mighty Goliath.

Saul gave David his armour and sword but David was uncomfortable using them. He decided to stick with his preferred weapon of choice – a sling – and returned Saul’s weaponry.

David and Saul’s story is a good illustration of the importance of discernment and good decision making.

Exo 4:10 ‘But Moses pleaded with the Lord, “O Lord, I’m just not a good speaker. I never have been, and I’m not now, even after you have spoken to me. I’m clumsy with words” (NLT).

Every great leader who accomplished his vision had to be an effective communicator.

Effective communication is the process of getting people to see what you see and what is required of them. There comes a time when you will have to share your vision with others and it is important that you are able to communicate your vision with clarity and simplicity if you are going to get their support. No one will help a man whose vision is vague and confusing. People need to know where he is heading and how he plans to get there.

It was Monday, February 16, 1976, a sunny day in Lagos, just before noon. The Lagos Lawn Tennis Club terraces were filled with middle class Nigerians and foreign expatriates. Arthur Ashe, current Wimbledon champion, was playing his semi-final match against Jeff Borowiak, a fellow American on centre court. The event was the $60,000 Lagos Tennis Classic tournament, part of the World Championship Tennis (WCT) pro circuit series, and Black Africa’s first professional tennis tournament. Ashe had just won the first set in a tie break. It was a game apiece in the second set and Ashe was about to serve. As he threw the tennis ball into the air, five men marched on to the court via the players’ entrance.

The spectators watched as the men approached Ashe. One of the men was in a brown suit while the others were in military outfit. The leader of the group, an army Captain, shouted “What are you doing? We are in mourning. You are making money. Are you all mad? Please go. Please go.” One of the soldiers shoved the cold steel of his machine gun into the back of Ashe’s sweat-soaked shirt to push him off the court. Ashe walked off the court with his two arms raised in the air, leaving his gear behind. The other soldiers proceeded to clear the Main stand, East and West wing terraces. Pandemonium broke out as spectators ran from their seats for the main exit before the soldiers got to them. The Nigerian spectators moved quicker than their bewildered foreign counterparts. They were well aware of their countrymen’s brutality. Ashe however headed to the dressing room.

In January, a month before the start of the Lagos Tennis Classic, Dick Stockton, an American tennis player, had visited the WCT headquarters in Dallas, Texas. He was concerned about travelling to Lagos to play in the Lagos Tennis Classic. He had read reports, in the local Dallas papers, of anti-American demonstrations in front of the US Embassy in Lagos. “I said to them that this could potentially be a very dangerous situation if these reports about all these anti-American demonstrations are true,” Stockton recalled. WCT officials assured him by saying “we have been in touch with the State Department and they told us that everything is fine, there is no reason to worry.”

Arthur Ashe played a key role in influencing WCT’s decision to take the event to Lagos. He had been to Nigeria in 1970 with fellow American tennis star, Stan Smith, as part of a US State Department goodwill tour. This experience had made him keen to promote tennis in Black Africa. The Lagos Lawn Tennis Club fulfilled every WCT condition to host the event which included providing the prize money for the singles and doubles’ tournaments and the building of a new centre court. World Championship Tennis signed a five year agreement with the Lagos Lawn Tennis Club to host an annual series of WCT tennis tournaments in Lagos. The 14 WCT players drawn to participate in the Lagos Tennis Classic were Arthur Ashe (USA), Tom Okker (HOL), Dick Crealy (AUS), Harold Solomon (USA), Jeff Borowiak (USA), Brian Fairlie (NZL), Eddie Dibbs (USA), Ismail El Shafei (EGY), Wojtek Fibak (POL), Karl Meiler (GER), Bob Lutz (USA), Stan Smith (USA), Erik Van Dillen (USA), and Dick Stockton (USA). Nigeria’s two best tennis players, Lawrence Awopegba and Yemisi Allan, were given wild card entries to compete in the tournament alongside some of the best tennis players in the world.

John McDonald, WCT’s International Director, was in the Lagos Lawn Tennis Club dressing room with a plastic bag containing WCT tennis players’ passports that fateful February 16 when Ashe entered. He had just been to the Lagos International Airport to retrieve them. Nigerian immigration officials had collected most of the players’ passports on their arrival from Barcelona and held on to them because their visas needed to be revalidated. These players were unhappy about leaving their passports behind but had no choice if they wanted to be permitted to leave the airport.

The man in the brown suit burst the door open and stepped into the dressing room with a big stick. He was accompanied by a soldier who ordered McDonald and Ashe to get out. The man with the stick slammed it on the table to emphasize this order and took a swing at the men as they ran away. The two men ran out of the stadium on to the street which was filled with people fleeing in all directions. McDonald spotted John Parsons, the Daily Mail tennis correspondent who travelled with the WCT contingent to Lagos, heading in the opposite direction. A soldier with an ebony stick shouted at Parsons “Where are you going?” as he clubbed him across the back. Parsons had been on his way to the local Reuters office to file the breaking story with the Daily Mail; instead he got an 18-inch weal on his back for his effort.

Donald Easum, US ambassador, was in the terraces watching the semi-final match with his security detail, a young marine guard in civilian clothes. He located Ashe, Borowiak and McDonald outside the stadium and secured vehicles to transport them to the US Embassy. Ashe and Borowiak got into one car while McDonald was put in another car. On their way, Ashe and Borowiak’s vehicle was held up in a traffic jam because a soldier was beating a Nigerian spectator in the middle of the road. The players got out of the car and headed to the US Embassy on foot. The Hungarian ambassador on his way from the Lagos Lawn Tennis Club offered them a ride to their destination in his limousine. Easum and the marine guard chose to walk to the US Embassy and had to pass through a group of anti-American demonstrators who chanted in protest with placards declaring “Down with the CIA” and “Yankee, go home.” Some carried pictures of the Nigerian Head of State with placards lauding him.

Friday the 13th was supposed to be the fourth day of the Lagos Tennis Classic tournament. General Murtala Mohammed, the Nigerian Head of State, was on his way from his Ikoyi residence to his office at the army headquarters in Dodan barracks. His metallic-black Mercedes Benz was stuck in a traffic jam near the Federal secretariat shortly after 8 a.m. The General had his Aide-de-Camp beside him while his orderly sat in front with the driver. He, unlike General Gowon, his predecessor, travelled without an armed security escort.

A group of men with machine guns strolled to the General’s vehicle and fired at the car and its occupants. Pedestrians and drivers stuck in the traffic jam scampered for safety. One of the gunmen fired a whole magazine of bullets at the car, reloaded and then fired another magazine at it. The gunmen left the bullet-riddled car and headed for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation. The leader of the group was the head of the Nigerian Army Physical Training Corps, Lt. Colonel Bukar Dimka, a 33 year old man with a waxed walrus moustache and a deep tribal mark on each cheek. He announced from the radio station that the ‘Young Revolutionaries’ had overthrown the Government and declared a 6am to 6pm (sic) nationwide curfew while imploring listeners to stay by their radios for further announcements. His short recorded broadcast played repeatedly on the radio throughout the morning and was interspersed with martial music.

Dick Stockton was asleep in his room at the Federal Palace hotel when his hotel telephone rang. It was Paul Svehlik, the WCT tour manager. He told Stockton about the attempted coup and cancellation of the Lagos Tennis Classic matches for that day. A shocked Stockton was told to inform the other four American tennis players at the hotel. The instruction was to stay in the hotel until further notice. One of the Americans that Stockton called was Eddie Dibbs who asked “What the hell’s a coup?” when he saw Stockton. Pele, the Brazilian soccer superstar, and his entourage were also at the Federal Palace hotel when they heard about the coup attempt. They stayed beside the radio in their hotel room to find out what was happening. He was in Lagos on a Pepsi-Cola sponsored marketing tour to play an exhibition match and run some soccer clinics.

Around lunchtime, the five tennis players went down to the hotel’s swimming pool area to relax. Eddie Dibbs, Harold Solomon, Bob Lutz, Erik Van Dillen and Dick Stockton were by the pool when 30–40 soldiers with machine guns surrounded the area. The scared hotel manager came to the swimming pool and told the guests in the area to get back into the hotel for their safety. Everyone was unsure what the soldiers were going to do.

The Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation went off air around 3pm when Federal Government troops tried to recapture the radio station from the coup plotters. Dimka escaped during a brief gunfire exchange between Federal forces and his men. The radio station returned to air around 4pm playing popular Highlife music. At 6.20pm, a spokesman for the Federal Military Government came on air to announce that the coup attempt had been crushed with several arrests made. He stated that a 6pm to 6am curfew was in place throughout the country and all borders and airports were closed until further notice. There was no mention of the fate of the Head of State. Lagos, the busiest city in Black Africa, was subdued as most Lagosians stayed indoors by their radios. The city was on high security alert. There were numerous roadblocks all over the city manned by soldiers tasked with maintaining security and capturing suspected coup plotters. There was no further radio announcement from the Federal Military Government that Friday.

The five American players received a phone call from the US Embassy that evening and were told to pack their stuff and be prepared to leave the hotel. The Federal Palace hotel wasn’t considered safe. Donald Easum sent a minibus to evacuate the players. The driver of the minibus took a wrong turn on the way back and got into an argument with a soldier stationed at a road block. The soldier pointed his machine gun at the vehicle and the tennis players thought they were going to die. He eventually let them go through after he was satisfied that they were harmless. There were no spare rooms at the US ambassador’s residence for the five American players because Ashe, Borowiak and Tom Okker (a Dutch tennis player) were already staying there. This meant that alternative accommodation had to be arranged with an American family. “We descended on this poor family,” Bob Lutz recalled. “They were an elderly couple and he worked for the US Embassy.”

The assassination of General Mohammed was officially announced around noon on February 14 and his deputy, General Obasanjo, was named as his successor. His corpse was flown to Kano, that Saturday, and buried in his hometown according to Muslim rites. The Federal Military Government announced seven days of national mourning in honour of the slain Head of State.

Rumours circulated across the country that the US Government via the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was involved in the coup attempt and assassination of General Mohammed. This was because of the well-publicised differences between the US Government and Nigerian Government over the latter’s support for the soviet-backed People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). Tennis matches scheduled for Saturday were cancelled because of the national mourning.

John McDonald pushed for the players to continue with the tournament and this led to a big argument between him and some of the American players who weren’t willing to play in such unsafe conditions. McDonald told the players that if they didn’t play then they wouldn’t be let out of the country. This was because their passports were still at the time with Nigerian custom officials who had taken them for visa revalidation.

“We were told that the last coup that had taken place was a bloodless coup and no one was able to get out of the country for a while,” Stan Smith said. “We were concerned that we would not get out of the country to go to the next tournament.”

Lagos Lawn Tennis Club officials contacted McDonald late Saturday to inform him that Federal Military Government had authorised the resumption of the tennis tournament on Sunday. The Government also promised to provide a plane to fly the players out of the country at the end of the tournament despite the closure of the national borders and airports. John McDonald contacted the 8 players still left in the singles tournament to notify them that the event was back on. There were six Americans, a German and an Australian in the quarter-finals. The plan was to play the quarter-finals on Sunday and the semi-final and final matches on Monday to make up for the two lost days — Friday and Saturday. The doubles tournament which was in the semi-final stage was cancelled because there wasn’t enough time to fit it into the schedule.

The quarter-final matches resumed at 11am on Sunday, February 15 and all the four matches went smoothly without any incident. Four Americans {Dick Stockton, Bob Lutz, Arthur Ashe and Jeff Borowiak} made it through to the semi-final stage in straight sets. The Lagos heat sapped the players’ strength and motivation so that players who lost the first set went on to lose the match. The players weren’t provided with cold drinks by the tournament organizers and struggled as a result. Some of them snuck into the air-conditioned room close to centre court for a few seconds to cool down during game change-overs. The match umpires permitted them to do this. February would go on to be the hottest month of that year in Lagos.

Sunday was a relatively calm day in Lagos after Friday’s upheaval which meant that Arthur Ashe, Jeff Borowiak and Tom Okker with Donald Easum could go to the Brazilian ambassador’s residence to have lunch with Pele. Whereas the five American players staying with the elderly American couple had nothing to do. “They had this world professional dart board and darts and we were bored. There were these huge lizards running around the property,” Erik Van Dillen said. “We decided to go on a big safari hunt and see if we can get them. We weren’t very politically correct at the time.” The lizards were too quick for the players despite their best efforts. “So Eddie Dibbs is going one way and I am going another and he throws a dart which ricochets off the cement floor and sticks right into my leg. It hurt for a little bit.” Bob Lutz laughed as he recalled the incident. “We had a lot of fun considering what was happening.”

Dibbs and Lutz later approached some soldiers stationed at a road block down the street to chat with them. The soldiers were eating their rations and seemed friendly. The players told them that they were in Lagos to play a tennis tournament. All of a sudden, their Commanding Officer showed up and shouted at the players “What are you doing here? Are you CIA? Are you spies? Get out of here!” The players hurried back to their residence.

The 18-man WCT contingent comprising of 14 players, 2 WCT officials and 2 English journalists departed from their Ikoyi rendezvous point in a convoy of cars in the early hours of Tuesday, February 17, for Lagos International Airport. The Federal Military Government provided an armed police escort to the airport. This ensured that the vehicles were able to pass through the roadblocks that dotted the city. The Government also kept its word by providing an airplane and lifting it’s imposed flight restrictions to let the tennis contingent leave Lagos airspace. They were the first foreigners allowed to leave the country after the attempted coup. The local Pepsi-Cola Manager approached Donald Easum the day before to enquire about Pele and his entourage traveling with the WCT contingent but official government permission couldn’t be secured in time for this to happen. There was a large military presence at the airport to prevent fugitives like Dimka from leaving the country. The plane departed at 7.00am in order to catch the AZ 837 Alitalia plane which left Accra at 8.15am and arrived in Rome at 2.35pm. There was an eruption of cheers by the players as the aircraft took off from the Lagos International Airport runaway. They were relieved that their ordeal was finally over.

“It was an unfortunate incident”, Harold Solomon recalled. “We were going down to have a major tournament in a developing African country and it was a case of bad timing that we were there when they had an unfortunate coup de’tat.”

The Rome WCT tournament was delayed by a day to accommodate the late arrival of the players. Arthur Ashe went on to win this tournament. Pele eventually left Lagos when the Federal Military Government re-opened the borders and airports a few days later. The Brazilian ambassador insisted that he wore an aviator’s uniform to conceal his identity. The greatest danger that Pele faced throughout his time in Lagos was to lose money during games of gin rummy in the Federal Palace hotel.

The WCT informed Arthur Ashe, Jeff Borowiak and Dick Stockton when they got to Rome that they had to honour their Lagos Tennis Classic match commitments. They had to complete the event to ensure that the prize money and Hagger points for the singles tournament were appropriately distributed. The only available opportunity to do this was at the Caracas WCT Open. On April 1, in the middle of the Caracas tournament, Arthur Ashe completed his unfinished semifinal match against Borowiak by beating him. The following day, April 2, he faced Stockton in the final and lost to him. The match was over in less than an hour and it was Stockton’s first ever victory against Ashe. The score was 6–3, 6–2. The WCT never held another tennis tournament in Nigeria. The Lagos International Airport was renamed ‘Murtala Mohammed International Airport’ a few days after his assassination. Dimka was on the run for three weeks after the coup attempt before his eventual capture on March 5. He was executed on May 15, 1976. There was never an official Government explanation for the military interruption of the Ashe vs Borowiak semi-final match.

This longform story is based on archival newspaper research, biographical accounts of key characters, US Embassy/State Department cables plus telephone interviews with Tom Okker, Stan Smith, Harold Solomon, Dick Stockton, Bob Lutz, John McDonald, Ismail El Shafei, Paul Svehlik, and Erik Van Dillen.

My thanks to everyone who helped me during the reporting and writing of this story.

I believe ‘reverse engineering’ is essential for producing creative ideas. The video clip below is a cool visual description of the terminology. This clip is the first 23 seconds of the movie trailer for Pay Check (2003) starring Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman.

I wrote a couple of blog posts a few years ago on creativity and reverse engineering. Though I have included relevant excerpts from both posts in this post, I would recommend that you click the links for these posts to read the full texts.

The first post titled “Creative Leadership 6” was published in 2010:

King Solomon, in the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible, said that there is nothing new under the sun. Everything is an adaption of something that has previously existed. Google and Facebook were not the first search engine or social network platform in their industry, but their founders adapted what existed before and then created something better than the rest. Today, both companies dominate their industries. Steve Johnson argued, in his September Wall Street Journal essay, that “big new ideas more often result from recycling and combining old ideas than from eureka moments.” Creative leaders are lifelong learners. They expose themselves to a diverse range of old and new ideas in order to make connections that they can adapt to produce innovative solutions.

Nigeria recently had its presidential elections which was won by General Muhammadu Buhari, who beat the incumbent Head of State, Goodluck Jonathan. This is the first time that a Nigerian ruling party has lost the presidential election in the country’s democratic history. There was a fear that the country would descend into chaos if the electoral outcome didn’t favour the ruling party. A number of wealthy Nigerians took short vacations outside the country during the election period to be out of harm’s way. Thankfully, worst case violent scenarios didn’t materialise and the ruling party accepted defeat.

There is a career profile series called ‘Get that Life’ which is published weekly on Cosmopolitan’s website. I have read a few articles in the series especially the ones profiling individuals with creative writing careers and would recommend that you visit the website to check out some of the women profiled in the series.

The women in the ‘Get that Life’ series had found in their careers what Scott Belsky terms ‘the sweet spot’ which he discusses in his career-oriented chapter in the book – Maximize your potential.

 Aside from lots of hard work, great creative careers are powered by an intersection of three factors: interest, skill, and opportunity….The magic happens when you find the sweet spot where these three factors intersect. Scott Belsky