Rotting in jail: The footballing talent we waited for in vain

Football is, of course, the reason many of us know Victor Wanyama. The captain of the national football team, a core team member of Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur, the  first ever Kenyan player to score in the UEFA Champions League, most expensive player sold by a Scottish club for  £12.5 (Sh1.6 billion)…. he is, one of the most compelling figures in Kenya’s most popular sport.

On June 17, 2016, when Wanyama returned home from England on holiday, he made Kamiti Maximum Prison his first stop.

FAME

And no, he was not on a charity mission for one of the many non-governmental organisations looking to capitalise on his fame. It was to visit his former teammates who are in for life, condemned for the bad decisions they made at some point in their careers.

Among those he visited was Tedium “Teddy” Rodgers, a 41-year-old father of one and a midfielder who has been behind bars for 17 years.

Rodgers is among the pioneers of Mathare United Football Club as we know it today. He was Wanyama’s teammate at JMJ academy, before he switched to Mathare Youth Sports Association (MYSA), a sports-development aid organisation in the Mathare slums.

Rodgers’ talent saw him rise through the ranks at MYSA and in 2000, his team won the prestigious Moi Golden Cup and earned automatic promotion to the Kenyan Premier League.

In the months that followed, a string of bad decisions derailed Rodgers’ promising career, cost him millions in potential earnings, and eventually landed him in prison. He never got to feature for Mathare United in the Kenyan Premier League.

JAILED FOR CRIME

Teddy, as he is popularly known, was nabbed during an attempted robbery that went wrong on Nairobi’s Thika Road in early 2001. Teddy, together with his two accomplices, was arrested fleeing a crime scene with stolen goods, leading to a trial that lasted close to seven years.

In the end, his accomplices were freed after spending seven years in remand while he was convicted and sentenced to death, ending all his hopes of ever playing professional football abroad.

“I had an injury at that time, so I wasn’t playing football. But with a new wife and a young child, life was tough. My mother also depended on me so as I was recovering from the knee injury, I started getting involved with some of my friends, who were thieves. We successfully accomplished three missions, but on the fourth attempt we were arrested, charged with robbery with violence and condemned,” Teddy says.

Had President Mwai Kibaki not exercised his prerogative of mercy in August 2009, which commuted to life sentence the death sentences of more than 4,000 prisoners on death row, Teddy would have been hanged that year.

Moses Opula’s story is different. The 46-year-old, who has been behind bars for 11 years, is currently a trustee at the prison.

Opula was a goalkeeping trainer at AFC Leopards before he got caught up in crime and was sentenced to death after a lengthy trial. Before his arrest in mid-2007, Opula was assistant coach to Mickey Weche, one of Kenya’s most celebrated tacticians.

“I was walking with a group of bad friends and was arrested together with them. Surprisingly, all of them, who were the real culprits, were released at different stages during the trial, but I was tried and condemned to death,” Opula says.

Eric “Spring” Salim is another promising footballer whose life has now turned into just another cautionary tale. Salim was a renowned footballer while at Ofafa Jericho secondary School in Nairobi, and a two-time award winner in the national secondary school games. He was condemned to death in 2011 while still a minor.

“I was convicted when I was 17 years old. By then I had been involved in crime for two years. I used to see my friends dressing well, always frequenting social joints and I wanted that life although my parents didn’t have much.

“I was meant to travel to Norway with our school team for an invitational tournament that year but I couldn’t make it because I was constantly sneaking out of school to join my friends in crime or doing drugs. Then, one day we were all arrested somewhere around Wilson Airport after robbing a family at their home in Syokimau and since I was captured  by  the CCTV cameras, I was eventually condemned to death,” the 24-year old says.

Perhaps the most recent case is that of Byron Robert Otieno, an ex-Kariobangi Sharks’ striker who is also in for life after being found guilty of robbery with violence in 2015.

LOW INCOME

Throughout the interview at Kamiti, Teddy and his fellow inmates spoke candidly about the challenges they endured in the course of their budding football careers, including substance abuse and depression, and bad decisions that cost them a chance at football stardom.

They mentioned the likes of Dennis Oliech, MacDonald Mariga, Arnold Origi, Victor Wanyama and Michael Olunga as former teammates before their lives took a turn for the worse.

On the subject of Kenyan football, few have a more compelling stories to tell. The local top-flight league is semi-professional, and most footballers have to seek other sources of income. Some turn to low-paying jobs, others go to school, but a number resort to petty crime before graduating to violent crime such as armed robbery, and more recently, terrorism.

For reasons ranging from economic to moral, Kenyan footballers find themselves attracted to crime and its trappings. Lack of jobs for many of the young inhabitants of the Nairobi slums means they often turn to crime to make ends meet.

“I have campaigned in this city and I can tell you that this is a ticking time bomb. Unemployment and poverty are serious problems and when it erupts, I don’t know where people who are making an honest living will hide.

“Football can be a tool to get the youth in the slums out of crime, but it is society’s responsibility to ensure that such talent doesn’t go to waste and in that regard, we have failed,” says Dr Dan Shikanda, a former Gor Mahia and AFC Leopards striker who ran for the Nairobi governorship as an independent candidate last year.

“The few sporting facilities available in slums like Mathare have either been grabbed or privatised. For example, the Goan Institute is just a few metres from Mathare. But the youth from Mathare can’t use it because they must pay the Sh2,000 booking fees every day, and that’s expensive. The levels of desperation then drive them to crime. I am sure that’s what happened to Teddy, whom I played with at MYSA,” says Francis Kimanzi, the Mathare United coach who doubles up as the national U20 tactician.

PAINFUL MEMORIES

Prison life can soften the hearts of even the most ruthless criminals. For these former players, every day brings painful memories of advice not heeded.

“You come here and realise that you have left life for other people to live. I look at where Wanyama is at the moment and I feel so bad.

“During our time there no money in football. We used to play only as a hobby. But now I can see there is even a youth league, which means that there are limitless opportunities for footballers out there. I know I would have been a regular in the national team if I had stuck to football,” Teddy says.

The footballing inmates still love the l game and have formed a team. Kamiti United brings together inmates from different departments, who play against each other and share their skills with fellow inmates.

“The first thing I did when I got here was start this team. I found ways of getting the basics such as balls and we have been growing ever since. I was privileged to have worked alongside Mickey Weche, Gilbert Selebwa, Ezekiel Akwana, Salim Ali, Nicholas Muyoti and Francis Kimanzi and I was itching to use that knowledge so I created this team,” Opula said.

Peter Kemei, a security officer at Kamiti, says that since Kamiti United was formed five years ago, there has been a significant improvement in the general wellbeing of the inmates.

“They play here every morning, and sometimes we allow them to play teams from other prisons. It is for physical fitness and recreation. We don’t want them to stay idle yet they have talents. Since the team was formed, many small sub-teams have emerged, and now every block has a team. Even the ones who are in for terrorism participate and that input has improved discipline here,” he said.

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EX-FOOTBALLERS WHO GOT CAUGHT UP IN CRIME

ANWAR YOGAN MWOK

He is a former Kenyan footballer who was among the al-Shabaab fighters killed in Kulbiyow in battle with Kenyan troops in Somalia in January 2017. Mwok played for Mathare United and was killed as he rode in a truck laden with explosives at the Kulbiyow Kenya Defence Forces camp.

 

SHEM NYABERI

A former Kenya Breweries forward, Nyaberi was arrested in 2005 after being found with 300 grammes of heroin at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport as he was planning to leave the country for the Seychelles, where he was based as a footballer. Nyaberi was later found guilty of drug trafficking and jailed for 10 years but served only six years upon remission of his term.

 

KEN KIMANI “PINEDA”

Kimani, a 26-year old former Mathare United player, died after he was shot three times in the head by a police officer in 2013. The police claimed that Kimani was shot by police constable Titus Masila, who was alerted by the screams of an unnamed woman who was being mugged at a bus stop in Kasarani by a gang of five and robbed of a mobile phone. Masila allegedly shot at the gang, killing Kimani.

 

NICODEMUS ARUDHI

Arudhi was not even his name. Neither was Nicodemus. His name was Daniel Odhiambo. Nicodemus was his father’s name and he played for Luo Union, and then Gor Mahia. He played three international matches for Kenya in 1972. Arudhi surrendered to the police on June 21, 1981 and offered to show them where he had hidden his guns. When they got there, he started running away and was shot. He had been jailed several times, and at least once arrested for murder. The government eventually paid his family Sh250,000 as compensation.

 

OSBORNE MONDAY

Former Harambee Stars and Tusker midfielder Osborne Monday was arrested by the  Anti-Terror Police Unit in August 2015 after his mobile phone was used to communicate with terrorists. Monday was held and questioned by the ATPU detectives at their offices in Nairobi Area before being freed, following the intervention of Football Kenya Federation President Sam Nyamweya.

 

ERIC OTIENO

Yet another high profile case of a  Kenyan footballer being found on the wrong side of the law is Eric Otieno, a former Ulinzi Stars player who was arraigned alongside Tom Ogweno and Elvis Ayany (teammates) in January 2011 and charged with “being in possession of a pistol in circumstances which indicated that they intended to commit a felony”. They were all sacked by Ulinzi following the incident.

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FOOTBALLERS WHOSE FOCUS PROPELLED THEM TO REWARDING INTERNATIONAL CAREERS