Taribo West, Nigeria’s colourful defender who left juju for Jesus

Eccentric. Taribo West was famous for his weird hairstyle but on the pitch proper, he was a top defender for the Super Eagles. PHOTO /AGENCIES

What you need to know:

  • Taribo West made 41 appears for the Super Eagles and won the 1996 Olympic Gold as well as coming second to Cameroon in 2000 Africa Cup of Nations. However, the four-and-one figure that still haunts him was the shock 4-1 defeat to unfancied Denmark in the second round of the 1998 World Cup finals in France.

He did not score a single goal for the Super Eagles but you could not miss the presence of Taribo West on the pitch. Not because of his 6 ft 1 build, but rather for his colourful braids – often in colours of the team he played for – banded in three or four clusters.

At the 1998 World Cup, West’s only fashion rival was Columbia’s Carlos Valderrama, who wore an Afro-Blonde bush of curly locks.
Yet beneath the colourful hairstyle, West was a serious defender who in four years with Auxerre won the French Ligue 1 and two French Cup titles after playing for Enugu Rangers, among other Nigerian clubs.

West was also part of the Inter Milan side that won the 1997-98 Uefa Cup. The team had Brazilian great Ronaldo da Lima. Actually, it was the Nigerian who scored the extra time winner against Schalke in the quarter-finals.
He played 42 times for Nigeria in an 11-year spell, winning the 1996 Olympic gold medal and losing the 2000 African Nations Cup final 3-4 to Cameroon on penalties.
But the man who paints the best portrait of West’s career is Jim Smith, who coached Derby County in the 2000-2001 Premier League season.
‘His ability is remarkable. He said he’d come to save Derby, which he did, but when we were safe, he missed about three important games, playing for Nigeria and taking his time getting back,” he told The Guardian in 2002.

“If he had been in the side, I think he could have pushed us further up the league and got us more place money. But he was the major reason we did as well as we did. We got an average of one-and-a-half points a game with him, which took us from what people considered an impossible position to safety.”
Such was the mutual respect between coach and player that Smith allowed West to return to Milan for preaching business every Sunday at the church he had founded during his Inter tenure.
He was always certain about his post-football future: “I will go to Milan and be a professional pastor,” he told The Guardian in 2002. “There’s no way I could be a coach.”

From juju to Jesus
And West, who founded Shelter in The Storm Miracle Ministries of All Nations in 2014, is now a full-time pastor, preaching the gospel in the ghettos. He calls this a total transformation from juju to Jesus, which was brokered by his close friend Patience Ikemefuna, a female pastor.
“In my playing days, when I was ignorant, I used to get some mallams and babalawos (traditional doctors) to make charms for us, which we took to (national) camp,” he told The Punch.

“In some clubs, before every game, the president or leader of the club will give you a lucky charm to play with. They will tell you to put it in your boots or socks and play.”
He confesses burning candles and holding magic stones from Israel before football games.
“It works for those who believe in it. I saw it, I experienced it, I was with players that used it and I used it,” West told The Pulse in 2015.

Against the mafia
After 44 league games in the two seasons at Inter, West joined cross-town rivals AC Milan in December 1999, after playing no single game for the 1999-2000 season under new Inter manager Marcello Lippi.
His Milan debut was delayed by his engagement at the 2000 Afcon, until March 24, 2000, when he replaced striker Andriy Shevchenko in added time in the 2-0 win over Juventus.
On May 14, he scored in a 4-0 victory over Udinese. But the centre-back was restricted to just four appearances and was loaned to Premier League side Derby County in November 2000. He never played for Milan again.

Last year, West told Nigerian media that it was Italian mobsters who forced him out of Milan. He claimed they could not accept a player from Africa dislodging Milan legends like Paolo Maldini and Alessandro Costacurta.
“The Mafia cooked a vicious story in the press that I was injured in the desperate bid to send me out of Milan,” West told Score Nigeria in September 2019.
“The doctors were bribed to say I was injured, but it was a lie. They did that because they felt it was unthinkable for an African player to take the place of those [...] aging defenders.
“Liverpool came with an offer, but at the end of the day, I had to settle for Derby County.”

We would like to treat Pastor West’s allegations as gospel truth. But the aforementioned aging defenders enjoyed regular football for Milan, for nearly a decade after his departure, winning two Champions League trophies (2002-03 and 2006-07) and the 2003-04 league title.
Meanwhile, from England, to Germany, Yugoslavia and Qatar, West last signed for Paykan in 2007, but his contract was terminated before kicking a ball for the Iranian outfit.
Costacurta, who was eight years West’s senior, retired the same year, aged 41. Maldini, six years older than West, played until 2009.

World Cup monologues
Nigeria had surprised even themselves topping Group D with six points at the 1998 World Cup in France. After shocking Spain 3-2, they sealed qualification by beating Hristo Stoichkov’s Bulgaria 1-0. Losing to Paraguay 3-1 could not pull them down.
In the Round of 16, they were favourites against Denmark, who had finished behind France with four points in Group C that had Saudi Arabia and debutants South Africa.
But the Super Eagles embarrassed themselves by losing 4-1 to the Danes. It was not just complacence. Pastor West tells us why:
“Some players sneaked women into camp,” West told The Punch, a Nigerian paper in April.

“The women were Africans who came to watch the tournament and fell in love with our team, because of the way we played in the group stage. So, it was easy for these players to woo them to their rooms.
“That is why on match day, you could see a lot of the players didn’t have the strength to curtail the Danish players. They were tired after overworking themselves the night before with the women.”

Here, West sounds just an innocent witness. But in another interview with Sports Extra last year, he confessed that sex romps were a tradition among the Super Eagles:
“We normally kept the girls in different locations, but once everyone was asleep, around 2am, we would bring them into our hotel rooms. It happened in every tournament we competed in, from the Africa Cup of Nations to the World Cup.”
Now 46, the braids are gone, and talks about all these behind-the-scenes things freely because he is no longer in it. He is a reformed man.
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