In the storied history of Nigerian football, few figures commanded as much intellectual gravity and sparked as much societal debate as Chief Adegboye Onigbinde during his life time, reports TUNDE LIADI and LANRE AGIRI…

To the global football community, he was the reverred ‘Modakeke High Chief’, a FIFA technical instructor who saw the pitch as a laboratory. To his critics and kinsmen, he was a defiant traditionalist who defended his polygamous household with the same clinical precision he used to dismantle an opposing team’s formation.

On March 9, 2026, when the final whistle blew on his 88-year journey, Nigeria didn’t just lose a coach. It lost its most stubborn intellectual. From the dusty pitches of Modakeke to the high-tech arenas of Shizuoka, Onigbinde’s life was a master class in indigenous defiance.

Born in 1938 into the Jagun Omode dynasty, Onigbinde was the “Omo Ayo”—a child of joy granted to his parents late in life. Perhaps that is why he never rushed. He didn’t start primary school until he was ten. He didn’t chase the ball; the ball chased him.

​In 1958, when the legendary Teslim “Thunder” Balogun came calling with a professional offer, Onigbinde did the unthinkable: he said no.

​”I was earning £10 a month as a teacher,” Onigbinde once reflected. “It was a stable livelihood. I wasn’t ready to abandon the classroom for the uncertainty of the pitch.”

​He eventually found a way to merge both. By 1961, he was one of only 12 men to pass the rigorous coaching course under Bet Hallevy. The classroom teacher had become the game’s master.

​The “atypical” tactician

​To the many stars that grew through his hands , Onigbinde was an enigma and sometimes, a nuisance. He didn’t believe in the “copy-paste” mechanics of Western coaching. He believed in the Nigerian spirit.

​Segun Odegbami, the “Mathematical” himself, remembers the friction clearly:

​”We hated him with a passion before we later loved him with equal passion,” Odegbami noted. “He was a teacher that we thought knew nothing about football… yet he rose to become the Chief Coach of the national team.”

His rise was defined by a radical trust in indigenous talent. In 1984, he shattered the “glass ceiling” for local coaches by leading the Green Eagles to an AFCON silver medal in Côte d’Ivoire. It was an era where the Nigeria Football Association (NFA) was obsessed with foreign managers yet Onigbinde proved that a man from Modakeke could out-think the continent’s best.

“When players came from Europe and trained under him, they would say they did not understand some of what he was doing,” recalled Segun Odegbami, the legendary winger who blossomed under Onigbinde’s tutelage. “He wasn’t conventional; he had something truly indigenous about his approach.”

That “indigenous approach” included the audacity to field a 17-year-old Femi Opabunmi at the 2002 World Cup, prioritizing long-term structural development over immediate, superficial results.

​”How can you explain a boy of 17 playing at the World Cup?” Odegbami asked. “That was Onigbinde. It was not recklessness; it was conviction.”

In defence on polygamy

While his tactical brilliance was public record, Onigbinde’s private life was a subject of intense curiosity.

One of the most untold aspects of Onigbinde’s life was his unapologetic stance on his personal life. A polygamist with five wives at some point, he viewed family through the lens of administration and biblical history.For Onigbinde, managing a home was no different from managing a team: it required organization, honesty, and a “peaceful administration.”

“Some of the people who proclaim to be monogamists are pure hypocrites because they have women all over the place,” Onigbinde said in an interview with defunct National Life in 2019. “I am good enough to say, okay, if I want to have ten [wives], let them come.”

For Onigbinde, polygamy was not an exercise in carnal indulgence—in fact, he famously described himself as “sexually lazy.” Instead, he viewed his home through the same lens as his football teams: organization and emotional compatibility.

​”My attraction to women is not for sex but for what each one of them is,” he confessed. “Sex is an emotional thing… I am a real person, not a masquerade.”

He defended his lifestyle with a mix of biblical scholarship and sociology, citing Abraham, David, and Solomon. He argued that since women outnumbered men in society, monogamy was “working against God.”

To him, a peaceful home was not about the number of partners, but the quality of the management. He preferred the transparency of multiple marriages to the “shadow-chasing” of secret affairs.

He added: “There is even an indication that God directed even some of them to take another wife. What matters is what everybody you come in contact with whether it is a wife, a friend, a son, a father, a mother or any relation. That what is important and what God needs is not how many of them you have.

“I wonder why people are not talking about not having two friends. Because if they say you have two wives you cannot love them the same way, therefore I should not have two friends because I cannot love them the same way. (General laughter )

“What matters is how you relate with people,” he added.

Life in the theatre

Onigbinde’s intellectual curiosity extended into the arts. He was a fixture in the theatrical productions of the University of Ife, acting in iconic plays like Kurunmi and Ogun under the direction of Ola Rotimi. This flair for the dramatic informed his coaching—he understood that football, like theatre, required a mastery of psychology and timing.

​The bitter end of a legend

​Despite the titles—the Ekerin Balogun of Modakeke, the FIFA Technical Instructor, the AFCON Silver medalist—Onigbinde’s sunset was shadowed by the very system he sought to build.

​The “Oracle” died while still being owed arrears by Shooting Stars Sports Club (3SC), dating back to his rescue mission in the year 2000. He spent his final years chasing wages from an administration that seemed to have developed amnesia regarding his contributions.

​Perhaps the greatest tragedy was the death of his final dream: a football coaching institute at Lead City University.

​”Nigeria must find a way to immortalize him,” Odegbami insisted. “His legacy will be hard to match.”

​Onigbinde’s passing marks the end of an era where football was taught as a craft, not just played as a game. He was a man who lived by his own rules, coached by his own instincts, and died waiting for a nation to give him the credit—and the wages—he had long since earned.



1948: Onigbinde began primary school at age 10, unusual for the era, earning the status of omo ayo (a late-born “child of joy”).


1958: Legendary striker Teslim “Thunder” Balogun invited Onigbinde to play professionally in Ibadan. He declines, choosing the stability of his £10/month teaching job, marking him as a pragmatist.

1961: Attended a transformational coaching course under Bet Hallevy in Nigeria, emerging as one of only 12 participants certified. The foundation of his coaching philosophy is laid.

1984: History in Côte d’Ivoire: Became the first indigenous coach to lead the Green Eagles to the Africa Cup of Nations final, securing a Silver Medal. He also led IICC Shooting Stars (now 3SC) to the final of the prestigious African Cup of Champions Clubs (now CAF Champions League), establishing his tactical brilliance on the continent.

2000–2002: Appointed by Oyo State Governor Lamidi Adesina to save Shooting Stars from relegation, successfully returning them to the top flight within two seasons.

2002: Returned to the national team (now Super Eagles) for the FIFA World Cup in Korea/Japan. His squad selection is controversial, prioritizing unknown youngsters (like 17-year-old Femi Opabunmi) over established stars, reinforcing his reputation as a developmental tactician.

Post-2002: Solidified his status as a leading technical expert, serving on multiple FIFA and CAF Technical Study Groups and acting as a Technical Adviser for the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation.