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To understand the intrigues of Segun Odegbami’s life, you must first understand the absolute tyranny of his youth.
When he was 17, he possessed the sensitive hands of an artist, destined for poetry, illustration, and the scenic flurry of a canvas. Then came football, swallowing him whole and turning him into a household name across Africa; a celebrity so colossal that a simple factory visit could shut down an entire corporate plant for a day.
Today, at 74, the stadium roars have faded into the quiet of a solitary existence. Odegbami rarely replays old matches in his head, nor does he long for the multi-million-dollar European salaries of contemporary football.
Instead, as his body ages, reminding him of his mortality, Odegbami looks forward with a striking, urgent clarity to a more fruitful, selfless twilight.
From the profound lessons of unconditional fatherhood to his enduring, post-romance alliance with Oyin Adeyemi, Nigeria’s ultimate Number 7, aka ‘Mathematical Odegbami’ proves that his greatest victory isn’t a silver trophy, but his unshakeable grip on his own integrity.
You recently turned 74. When you look in the mirror today, who do you see, the footballer millions of Nigerians remember, or a completely different Segun Odegbami?
People remind me constantly about my relationship with football on a daily basis to the extent that I look at most of life through the prism of football.
Even in maturing to the person that I am today, football (as a part of sport) has been at the core of my life’s journey – my work, my pastime, my social engagements, my projects, most things around me.
You recently described this stage of your life as the “evening” of your journey and every additional day as a bonus. Has turning 74 made you think differently about mortality, legacy and the things that truly matter?
As I get older, and refuse to acknowledge the increasing numbers in my age that stare at me, physically, my slowly ‘withering’ body makes me acknowledge mortality, the increasing aches and pains, the small health conditions, more aging and dying colleagues around.
There is no ‘whole lifetime ahead’ any more, as I used to think in my younger days.
Getting things done NOW, not prevaricating over issues, seeing the positives and opportunities in most things around me now, have become my response to the constant reminder of the inevitability of mortality.
What do you understand about life today that you wish the 30-year-old Segun Odegbami had understood?
I spent too much time ‘enjoying’ life in the least important ways, instead of building a solid career early in a field of my passion.
I should have been a fine artist, painting, writing poems and illustrating them. Those were my natural gifts till I was 17.
Instead, following the reality of my life in and after football, I was led to follow a life related always to football. Everybody saw me as a footballer.
It took me a while to discover that everything in life could actually be seen and experienced through sport.
Since then, life has been well. I learned to chart a course in life through Sport!
You have been famous for almost half a century. What has fame given you and what has it taken away?
The only thing it took away from me is my privacy.
I cannot hide to do anything. That’s why my life is an open book.
Outside that, it has been very kind to me, very beneficial, opening doors of opportunities, to meet people, getting things done easier than usual, and so on.
Of all the matches you played for Nigeria, which one still plays in your head when you are alone?
I really don’t play old matches in my head. I don’t miss the game. I had my fill of it.
When I watch football these days I just wonder how I survived the physicality, the pressures, the pains. I don’t want to relive them again.
If the Segun Odegbami of 1980 were playing today, with European salaries, endorsements and modern sports marketing, how big do you think “Mathematical” would have become?
Ah, very big, I believe.
I could have approached my football career differently, not just as an object of passion and for national service, but as one that had the power to take care of me for the rest of my life!
I would have given it my all deliberately, and played more intentionally, packaged and marketed myself better.
I ‘sold’ my career too cheaply!
You belonged to a generation that became national heroes before football began producing today’s extraordinary fortunes. When you see what present-day stars earn, do you ever think: I was born too early?
Not necessarily. I don’t spend any time longing for what is past.
I was born at the right time. My popularity in Nigeria then was as much as I would have got were it to be now. I was a household name all over Africa. It was beyond whatever I could have imagined.
We visited Guinness Nigeria Plc with three of my football colleagues after our 1980 success. The factory closed down that day due to the throng of fans in their plant in Ikeja.
If President Bola Tinubu handed you Nigerian football tomorrow and simply said, “Segun, fix it,” what are the first three things you would change?
I will do exactly what he has started to do in the past week – clean the ‘dirty’ stable (the football association), reform and reset the buttons of administration of Football; and get quality persons from various fields to join me to empower Nigerian youths to hone their talent to take the game to the highest levels in the world, and to join the massive global sports industry for national development.
People know almost everything about Segun Odegbami the footballer, but surprisingly little about Segun Odegbami the husband, companion and lover. Was that deliberate?
No, that aspect of me is just a reflection of the life I lived after sports.
You were married to Jumoke Tejumola Odegbami. Looking back today, what happened to that marriage, and what did its breakdown teach you about yourself?
I don’t like to look back at that period.
My young family moved abroad and started to live there. I did not move abroad with them.
The time spent apart from family expanded to several years. It created irreversible damage.
Living alone in Nigeria, with all the fame I had, created a gap that I could not fill as the years rolled by.
Let me ask you very simply: were you a good husband?
No, I was not.
I could not manage the situation I created for myself well enough.
Could you please clarify when your first marriage ended and when the divorce was officially finalized?
I married Jumoke Tejumola in February 1978. We were together for many years, but somewhere along the line, the marriage broke down and we started living apart.
Eventually, I had to take the legal steps to formally bring that chapter of my life to a close.
On June 21, 2012, the High Court in Ibadan granted the decree nisi for the dissolution of the marriage.
It was a long and important chapter of my life, but sometimes relationships simply run their course. You accept it, learn from it and move on with your life.”
Football gave you extraordinary fame while you were still relatively young. Did fame make marriage and perhaps fidelity more difficult?
It was more the separation by distance that did the most damage. Not the game.
I learned to live alone and by myself, and got used to it.
That ‘freedom’ allowed me to endure all the hardships I encountered because I was by myself, accountable to no one.
I had to pay a high price for that for the rest of my life.
You once publicly clarified that you are a monogamist and not a polygamist. Why was correcting that perception important to you?
Because, I was never a polygamist.
There may be the perception out there in public that I have been married more than once. Since my divorce I have not remarried.
I was going to try again, but it never happened.
Having experienced marriage and relationships, do you think you understand women better today than you did 30 or 40 years ago?
No. I can’t claim such authority.
Women are complex. My life is complicated too.
At 74, what does companionship mean to you? Do you still believe in marriage?
Companionship to me now is having a friend you can share good times with.
I do not see marriage in the picture. I cannot cope with the complexities of multiple relationships in the family.
So, no marriage for me again.
Chief, let me take you somewhere a little more personal. For years, your name and that of businesswoman Oyin Adeyemi were romantically linked, with different accounts of exactly what the relationship was. So, let us hear it from Segun Odegbami himself: what exactly was Oyin Adeyemi to you?
My best friend. Then, when we first met, till now.
She was very young and very innocent. She did not even know that I was famous, or anything like that.
Because of my outdoor life style and because she was really a very private person, it took a long time for her to realize the implications of a serious relationship with me and to run away.
We became so close that we even had a family introduction ceremony that probably would have led to marriage. But it never did.
When our son came, it was like a wake-up call for her.
You know, she is a sure-footed person, strong-willed and very focused. She knew what she wanted in life and went after it.
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I was a distraction for her, away from where she was heading.
That’s why she is such a very successful woman succeeding so well in a man’s world.
She has always been a deep thinker and scholar, very knowledgeable and very well-read academically. On top of that she is very beautiful.
So, we just became very good friends with some romance. A son came wonderfully into the picture.
We are not married. We will not be married. We settled that matter over a decade ago.
There were reports at one point that the relationship was heading towards marriage. How close did the two of you actually come to getting married?
It could have ended in marriage but obviously it would not have worked out well.
We were better off at being just very good friends.
In a way, we complimented each other.
Opposite ‘poles’ attracting.
What was it about Oyin that first attracted you to her?
She was (and still is) a very beautiful woman. Most men will salivate on seeing her.
At the same time, she is very intelligent and very smart.
Don’t listen to her talk on any subject because you will be enamored with the depth of her knowledge and intellect.
And she is a very very private person.
She blew my mind the first time I met her.
Two highly accomplished and strong-minded people can love each other deeply and still discover that building a life together is another matter entirely. Was that ultimately what happened between you and Oyin?
You can put it that way.
I understand her very well.
I don’t know if she understood me that well, but we complimented each other at the time because we were very different on almost all counts.
Yet, she is an amazing person.
Our wide age difference was also a hindrance, I think. She makes fun of me always with it!
Reports subsequently suggested that the relationship ended. Without intruding unnecessarily into her privacy, what happened between the two of you?
We just ended the romantic relationship a long time ago, well over 10 years now.
But we kept our friendship.
Nothing happened. It was as if we both knew that we had to give up the romance for the friendship to survive and with a son we both love deeply, in between.
Was losing that relationship painful for you?
Painful?
We are still very good friends.
People naturally concentrate on what went wrong when relationships end. Let me turn that around: what went right between Segun Odegbami and Oyin Adeyemi? What beautiful memories remain?
It was a beautiful relationship.
There is no romantic relationship between us anymore, but we are still the best of friends.
That’s the kind of person she is. She is steely on the outside, but soft and tender inside.
A great mother to our son.
Do you and Oyin still speak today?
Of course. We are still very good friends.
If Oyin were sitting opposite you now—not the businesswoman, not the woman people wrote about, just Oyin—and you had one completely private minute with her, what would you say?
Thank you for everything you have being to me, and done for me.
Did loving her change anything about your understanding of women, relationships or marriage?
Everybody is different.
She is a different being completely. She does not fit the profile of the women that have I encountered in my life.
Do you have any regrets about the way that chapter of your life ended?
None!
And perhaps the question that finally settles years of speculation: who occupies Segun Odegbami’s heart today?
No one, romantically.
My children!
Strip away “Mathematical,” the national honours and the celebrity for a moment. What kind of father do your children say Segun Odegbami is?
The best father in the world.
Every single one of them, bar none, would say that.
We are all very close friends.
Is that different from the father you believe yourself to be?
No. My children are my best friends.
Is there anything you wish you had done differently when your children were younger?
I wish I had spent more time with them.
What has fatherhood taught you that football never could?
To love unconditionally.
In football, you have to ‘hate’ your opponent a little to inflict the pain of defeat on them. And then you make up after.
Unreal!
When people discuss Segun Odegbami, football inevitably dominates the conversation. Is there another part of your life you fear history may overlook?
My life is an open book.
The modern search engines in the information super highway will reveal things about me that I may not even realize are a part of my story.
That’s how much the world has changed.
Nothing is hidden any more.
If you were permitted to live your life again from the age of 18, knowing everything you know today, the triumphs, mistakes, heartbreaks and consequences, would you still choose football?
That’s all I really know, seeing the world through the lens of football.
What I see is virgin territory of opportunities in a vast wilderness of football waiting to be discovered and exploited to make the world a better place for everyone.
If you could sit beside the young Segun Odegbami for five minutes before he became “Mathematical,” what would you warn him about?
Fame is sweet, fleeting, and ephemeral.
Education is the key and a security.
The two are paradise.
When the final whistle eventually blows and hopefully many years from now, what would you like Nigerians to say Segun Odegbami stood for?
He stood for integrity and good name.
He came, he saw, and he made the world around him a better place!
