‘It is my blood, it is my soul’: How six buses carried Shooting Stars’ faithful to Abeokuta

Prophet Joas Adeseko had a plastic horn in one hand and forty-seven years of history in his chest when I found him outside the MKO Abiola Stadium on Saturday evening, still buzzing from a night he had waited nearly three decades for.

Shooting Stars had just beaten Tunisia's CS Sfaxien 1-0, their first continental win, and Lucky Emmanuel's goal their first continental goal, since the club's return to Africa after 27 years away. The stadium around us was far from full, perhaps 30 per cent occupied, with no travelling Tunisian support to fill the gaps. But in the section behind the goal, a small, loud pocket of Ibadan had made the trip regardless, and Adeseko wanted to talk about all of it.

“The way I'm looking at this game, first of all, I thank God,” he said. “Secondly, I want to give kudos to our governor, Seyi Makinde, and the people around him. I'm also saluting our coach because this game has been fantastic. I didn't expect the guys to play like this because, out of the 11 players of Tunisia, seven are starting, including the goalkeeper. They are national team players. Last season, we didn't play like this, so I'm thanking God for this game.”

He was already thinking about the return leg, too. “Our defenders didn't confuse themselves, but our forwards also need to talk to themselves,” he said. “Today, I'm very happy, sir.”

‘We spent our own money': the six buses behind Shooting Stars' away support

I asked him about the empty seats. He answered before I had finished the question.

“It will be empty. Don't let me deceive you,” he said. “If it is about Abeokuta, I'll tell you the real thing. The people you are seeing here, you wouldn't say anything about them. We brought six buses. These are our buses. We also have some other buses and cars from Ibadan.”

Shooting Stars were only in Abeokuta because their own pitch had failed them. “Our pitch is what caused them to bring us to this place,” Adeseko explained. “Let's say the pitch at Lekan Salami Stadium is the problem. That's why we came here.” He was equally frank about why the host city itself had not filled the gaps. “The people in this state don't like to go out all the time,” he said. “The first time I came to this place, all the fields were empty. Even when Gateway FC was there, they don't come out to watch them. So we cannot blame them. Even the small boys will come for feeding now. That's why this place is empty. All these people you are seeing here, we came from Ibadan.”

None of it came cheap, and he did not pretend otherwise. “It cost all of us a lot of money. We are spending our own money, as you are seeing,” he said. “All our supporters paid for it. It's not God that gave us the money; we spent our own money. We didn't look to the board or anybody for it. All of us, the uniforms and everything you are seeing, we gathered together to contribute money and bring ourselves here. I know what is coming from my own pocket, but I know that we are worth it.”

Pressed for figures, he did the sums out loud. “As I'm looking at this bus now, one bus is almost ₦120,000,” he said. “Then there are taxis. Some of the buses are smaller buses; at least we have four of them. That's about ₦60,000 each. So, when you put the money together, the supporters don't look at what they have spent, because we love this club.”

It is that love, stretching back almost half a century, that explained everything else he had said. “I've been following this club for, let me say, 47 years, since Baba Lekan Salami was alive,” he told me. “I've followed this club all this time. I cannot deceive you. I cannot follow any other club in Nigeria again.”

Even his home state has not been able to pull him elsewhere. “I come from Kwara State. In Kwara State, they call me a supporter of Kwara United. I've told them I'm living with them, but I cannot leave Shooting Stars,” he said. “When we are going to Kwara to play against Kwara United, I will still follow Shooting Stars to Kwara. So, this is my state. This club, oh my God, is my heart, my sweet. It is my blood. It is my soul.”

There was no camera crew around Adeseko when he said it, no board member, no sponsor's banner behind him, just a man with a horn and six buses' worth of receipts, describing a devotion that had cost him money he was in no position to explain away. It is worth sitting with that image for a moment: a 10,000-capacity stadium with thousands of empty seats, and, tucked into the noisiest corner of it, someone insisting that this club is his blood and his soul.

Nigerian football spends a great deal of energy asking where its crowds have gone. Adeseko's answer, delivered without being asked directly, was that they never left. They simply have not been given enough reasons to make the journey he made. Six buses, on a free-entry Saturday, in a city Shooting Stars do not even call home, is not the behaviour of an indifferent fan base. It is the behaviour of one that has not yet been met halfway.

Shooting Stars now carry their slender 1-0 lead into the second leg against CS Sfaxien. Whatever happens there, Adeseko will likely be on a bus for it, still blowing his horn, still keeping his own accounts, still calling it his blood and his soul.

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