Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Abia Warriors will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Chukwuemeka Obioma signs something — a contract at Abia Warriors or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
69 points from position 4. The title is somebody else’s business and the drop is somebody else’s problem; what is left is the argument about passports.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Chijindu Godwill will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Abia Warriors the goodbyes have quietly begun.
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.
Obinna Owukwe was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Emmanuel Ogbuagu is on it.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Abia Warriors, another week without a signature from Chijindu Godwill.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Fatai Abdullahi has written the date down.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Chidiebere Nnachi provided it, and the 8.51 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Abia Warriors this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. Isaiah David has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Excel Okam commits to Abia Warriors for another 4 years.
The dugout10 Sep 2029
The manager has not finished forgetting Emmanuel Ogbuagu's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
Position 3, 24 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
A defender on the scoresheet, which happens rarely enough that everybody in the ground remembers who took the corner. 1 for him, and a mark of 7.89 for the rest of it.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Samuel Ogunjimi was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
8.30. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Successful dribbles: 38. 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.
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Boardroom4 Sep 2028
Abia Warriors close the window on a squad of their own making
5 in and 8 out, and no more changes for months. The manager has what he has, the supporters have their opinion of it, and the table will have the last word.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Abia Warriors is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Abia Warriors this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
A 2‑0 win over Bayelsa United, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
A deal that was a phone call from completion at lunchtime was dead by midnight. Abia Warriors will try again when the window opens; Plateau United may not be selling by then.