137 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. El-Kanemi Warriors lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Waliu Ojetoye falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at El-Kanemi Warriors this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
At 19 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
“There are things I liked and things we will be doing on Tuesday until they are right.” 1‑1, and a manager who had already decided what Tuesday looked like.
The deal with Barau is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
Waliu Ojetoye and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Successful dribbles: 19. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation El-Kanemi Warriors are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at El-Kanemi Warriors, another week without a signature from Waliu Ojetoye.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Waliu Ojetoye is living that version at El-Kanemi Warriors, and it tends to show in the first month.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Bakura Jibrin will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around El-Kanemi Warriors the goodbyes have quietly begun.
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
The paperwork is done long before the player is. Mfon Rowland has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means El-Kanemi Warriors have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Waliu Ojetoye is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Shehu Eze has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Chidera Abacha has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Calvin Iheanacho has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
A 1‑0 win over Rivers United, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Risilanu Ismail and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Stade Malien have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.
A loan enquiry to Shooting Stars: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.