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Nigeria: Odegbami Seeks Financial Help for Ailing Ex-Nigerian Goalkeeper, Peter Fregene

todayOctober 9, 2024 2

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Nigerian football legend, Segun Odegbami, has solicited financial assistance for ailing ex-Nigerian goalkeeper, Peter Fregene.

Fregene is a former goalkeeper of the Nigeria national football team, with a career spanning over two decades.

In a statement on Tuesday, Odegbami disclosed that Fregene is hospitalised in Sapele, Delta state, and urgently needs medical attention and financial assistance.

The 72-year-old former striker said his colleague is “waiting for help to be moved by ambulance” to the Ohara Teaching Hospital.

He said although “Tony Ojesina covered the ambulance costs, more funds need to be paid before he can be moved” to the teaching hospital.

Odegbami also lamented what he described as “the lack of a functional welfare scheme for retired athletes” in Nigeria.

The statement reads in full

I am frustrated because I am publishing this ‘horror’ picture (a picture of Fregene in a hospital bed), wishing I could do what needs to be done for a colleague without having to resort to yet another public appeal to the same few Nigerians that have, through the years, intervened in the matter of ill-health of a few retired, suffering Nigerian football heroes.

By now, we must have exhausted any remnant of ‘goodwill’ we have with Femi Otedola, Mike Adenuga, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, Babatunde Fashola, Benson Ejindu, Allen Onyema, and a few other Nigerians who often came to the aid of a few lucky sports heroes several times in the past.

Even if they have not complained, we are ashamed to go back to them again.

Why don’t we have, or why can’t we set up, even on our own, a simple welfare scheme for active and retired athletes across all sports in the country, to take care of our declining health in old age, long after our sports careers?

Doing so does not require knowledge of rocket science. What is needed are the will, hard work and a few good and committed people of integrity.

The danger now is that the number of retired ageing sports heroes languishing in poverty, neglect and ill health is legion already, and growing. Their stories are ugly and shameful.

The government has demonstrated time and again that sport is not a priority. 64 years after Independence they cannot and will not see it differently, period.

So, Peter Fregene is a reminder to us all again. As I look at him lying comatose on a hospital bed in Sapele and experiencing the suffering he must be going through, my frustration is mounting.