By Thirty years after Nigeria’s Dream Team struck Olympic gold in Atlanta, Kaduna State Governor Uba Sani has done what successive governments never got around to doing. Former Super Eagles star Daniel Amokachi says the governor allocated plots of land to him and fellow gold medallists Garba Lawal and Emmanuel Babayaro, and directed that streets be named after other members of the victorious 1996 squad who hadn’t yet been honoured.
Amokachi delivered his praise on Tuesday while touring the ongoing reconstruction of the Ahmadu Bello Stadium in Kaduna alongside other football veterans. He didn’t hold back on how long the wait had been. “When we won the Olympics gold medal in 1996, the Federal Government and state governments made several promises to us, but 30 years down the line, most of those promises were never fulfilled,” he said. “But Governor Uba Sani has fulfilled his own promise. He has given myself, Garba Lawal and Emmanuel Babayaro plots of land. He has also directed that streets should be named after some of those who have not been immortalised. We lack the words to thank him for this kind gesture and for his promise to ensure that veteran footballers and coaches are rewarded during their lifetimes.”
Lawal, who also served as General Manager of Kaduna United Football Club, turned his attention to the stadium project itself, calling it a step that would restore Kaduna’s standing as one of Nigeria’s football hubs. He said the facility, once finished, would meet international standards and give the national team a proper venue to train and play close to home. “Now, the Super Eagles will not have to go to Uyo to train. This one is right here at my doorstep. It’s a wonderful project and, by the grace of God, we shall come and unveil it by November,” he said.
Babayaro, the team’s former goalkeeper, credited Sani with something less tangible than land or bricks: pulling Kaduna’s football family back together. “Governor Uba Sani has assembled the entire football family of Kaduna State and football is thriving again like we used to know it,” he said.
Sani, responding to the veterans, thanked them along with coaches and administrators for their contributions to football in the state, and made clear the land grants were part of a bigger vision. He described Kaduna as Nigeria’s leading football-producing state, one that has sent more players abroad to make their mark internationally than most, and said his administration was determined to restore that legacy through serious investment in sporting infrastructure.
The stadium at the center of that push carries its own history. Sani recalled that the last CAF tournament match played there was in 2016, when the Super Eagles faced Egypt, long before the facility fell into disrepair. Its condition, he said, was bad enough that he personally approached President Bola Tinubu to request the Federal Government hand the stadium over to the state for reconstruction. “I made it very clear to him that I will demolish the stadium, which had 16,000 seating capacity and was built in 1964,” Sani said.
What’s replacing it is considerably bigger, as the reconstructed Ahmadu Bello Stadium will seat 33,000, edging past the 31,000-capacity Godswill Akpabio International Stadium in Uyo, and will feature a hybrid pitch combining natural grass with synthetic turf. Once finished, Sani said, it will be the only stadium in Nigeria with a FIFA-standard pitch, a distinction he framed against the country’s broader shortage of top-tier venues. According to him, Nigeria currently has just one CAF-standard stadium and none that meet FIFA standards.
Sani tied the investment to hard economic logic rather than sentiment alone. He pointed to the last World Cup hosted in the United States, which he said generated between $20 billion and $24 billion through hotel accommodation, transportation, and hospitality, and noted that Morocco pulled in roughly $1.4 billion from hosting the Africa Cup of Nations. Kaduna, he said, is positioning itself to capture similar economic returns by investing seriously in the infrastructure needed to host major sporting events.
