Football was never the plan the parents of Yomi Peters had for him while he was growing up. While in secondary school at St. Finbarr’s, Akoka, Lagos, Yomi was neither allowed to touch football nor go near the field, as his parents preferred him facing his studies.
His parents wanted him to become a lawyer or a medical doctor. But Yomi also had his other plans, which he quietly worked towards attaining.
Yomi would later gain admission into Government Trade Centre (now Technical College, Akoka) where he got trained in refrigeration, air-conditioning and house-wiring. His preference at the Trade Centre was to study and become an electrician, but fate foisted refrigeration and air-conditioning on him.
In 1968, after his programme at the Trade Centre, Yomi got a job as a maintenance man at Mandilas and Kalabari, a firm known for air-conditioning business. At the time, he had moved out of his parents’ home and rented a small apartment in Ayilara Street, near Ojuelegba, Surulere.
It was about that time they helped Mandilas and Kalabari form a football team known as M and K FC, which came about due to the existence of Leventis owning a team too. In the same year, Yomi won the Okotie Eboh Cup and met Austin Akosa, who later became a member of the Nigeria Football Association (NFA).
During that period, M and K was a Division 4 team in the Lagos Amateur Football Association (LAFA). But it had the chance to play in the Oba Cup, which is open to clubs in the four divisions back then.
Yomi Peters, alongside his M and K teammates, had the chance to face the big teams like Stationery Stores, PWD, ECN, Railways, Leventis and Police back then. It was during one of such matches that Stores’ fans recommended him to the founder and owner, Israel Adebajo.
Interestingly, the young footballer was still working as a maintenance man at Mandilas and Kalabari, while he was being persuaded, for five years, to join Stores.
Adebajo would even call up Yomi to help in repairing or maintaining his air-conditioners.
But the Stores founder did not let-up and kept pushing Yomi, and even gave him cash gifts.
Sadly, the day he agreed to play for Stores in 1969, after his mother had given him the blessing to play football – with Adebajo present in the small meeting, the Stores owner passed on.
Heart-broken by the death of Adebajo, and also ready to keep to the gentleman’s agreement with the Stores founder, Yomi later resigned at Mandilas and joined Stores.
With Yomi, Stores won virtually every trophy in sight in Lagos. It also won the National Challenge Cup (now the Federation Cup) in 1981. Yomi played alongside stellar names at Stores like the late Haruna Ilerika, Francis Ukot, Sani Muhammed, Tony Igwe, Ben Ajibode, Mohammed Lawal and Yakubu Mambo.
However, in his later years after football, he was no longer the same man that put fright in the faces of opponents on the pitch, as age and illness took toll on him.
Despite winning lots of matches and individual battles on the field of play, he lost the fight against cancer and died at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) on the morning of Wednesday, November 26, 2014.
Dotun Coker, a member of the Lagos State Football Association, describes the last moments of Peters thus: “I was surprised when I arrived at his bedside at the hospital to find him on oxygen. This took me by surprise because when we spoke about 2am that fateful day, he never showed any sign he was going to die.
“And few minutes later, he changed and what I saw was not a good sight to behold. The body depreciated and I knew something was wrong. He eventually gave up the ghost at exactly 8.55am.”
On Sunday, November 23, Peters was among Legends of the Federation Cup honoured by the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) at the Teslim Balogun Stadium, Lagos, during the cup final of the oldest football competition in the country. But he was represented by his wife, since he was in bed battling for his life against cancer.
Akosa, the man, who first met Peters in his playing career, gives an insight into why he became famously nicknamed Kwango.
“That name had to do with an incident involving him (Peters) and (Bolaji) Okubule (then a referee). He head-butted Okubule and since then he earned the name Kwango.
“But Peters was a fantastic man, a true gentleman. For football, he gave everything, and on the pitch he was always something else and oppositions feared him for that,” Akosa said.
Peters’ nickname comes from a famous Congolese professional wrestler, Johnny Kwango, known for his head-butts.
He has, no doubt, left his footprints in the sands of football pitches and will always be remembered as “one of the most passionate footballers of his generation,” Akosa concluded.
