How Pele’s Lagos Friendly Match Brought 3 Days Ceasefire To Nigeria Civil War In 1969
Brazilian football legend, Edson Arantes do Nascimento popularly known as Pele who is being mourned globally as a footballer, minister and singer after his death on Thursday, December 29, 2022, aged 82 was a man of many firsts and incredible feats. The first and only player to win the FIFA world cup three times: 1958, 1962 and 1970. He was named Athlete of the Century by the International Olympic Committee. He was voted World Player of the Century by the International Federation of Football History & Statistics (IFFHS) and was one of the two joint winners of the FIFA Player of the Century alongside Maradona. He was included in the Time list of the 100 most important people of the 20th century and is recognised by the Guinness World Record for the most career goals. None of these feats however comes close to his playing in Lagos in the middle of the Nigeria civil war in 1969.
Two years after a civil war broke out in Nigeria on July 6 1967, between Nigeria and the Biafra secessionist led by Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu, Pele and his teammates from Santos, his club side, would find themselves playing a football match in Lagos, Nigeria’s capital at the time, in the middle of the war.
How Pele’s journey to Nigeria started
In the 1960s, Santos, a Brazilian football club, was taking the sport around the world through tours which involved the club playing with local teams and Nigeria was one of the countries where they were scheduled to play. In 1969, while the war was ongoing in Nigeria, Pele reportedly asked about the likelihood of a friendly match in the middle of a war and the club’s business manager replied, “Don’t worry. They’ll stop the war. It won’t be a problem.”
On January 26, 1969, the Santos team landed in Lagos for an exhibition match against Stationary Stores FC in front of more than 25,000 spectators. Lt. Colonel, Ogbemudia, the military governor of Mid-West state opened the River Niger bridge that connected Biafra to Benin to allow for easy passage of spectators according to Santos’ Official website.
Pele wrote in his autobiography that his “teammates remember seeing white flags and posters saying there would be peace just to see Pele play.”
The match ended in a 2-2 draw with Pele scoring both goals for Santos. Pele’s teammate, Lima, said of the match: “We could have easily turned around and said, ‘War is all around us – why would we enter that mess?’ But we didn’t. We wanted to do it and we said: ‘We are not obliged to play, but we want to and we are going to do this.’”
A 2005 Time article claimed that: “Although diplomats and emissaries had tried in vain for two years to stop the fighting in what was then Africa’s bloodiest civil war, the 1969 arrival in Nigeria of Brazilian soccer legend Pele brought a three-day ceasefire.”
By the time the war came to an end in January 1970, an estimated three million people had died
Ben Lawrence, who was Editor, the Evening Times, Acting Editor and Managing Editor of the Daily Times newspaper in the 1970s, told Neusroom in 2021 that the war was a product of youthful exuberance.
“I was about 30 and I saw the war on both sides. The Nigerian civil war looks to me now, uncalled for. It was caused by the youthful exuberance of Gowon and Ojukwu,” he said.
