Nigeria 1-99 India: The truth behind Nigerian football’s most famous story

How did India beat Nigeria by 99 goals to 1?

Virtually every Nigerian of a certain age has heard tales of a Nigeria vs India game where the most incredible and unfortunate things ever to happen on a football pitch happened.

Imagine the scene, a thoroughly one-sided match with one team on the brink of a century of goals inside the regulation 90 minutes, promising to concede the match if the other team manages to score one goal.

Not even at the peak of Pep Guardiola’s all-conquering Barcelona side or the height of Hungary’s dominance of world football had this ever been heard of until India played Nigeria in a World Cup qualifier or invitational friendly, depending on the story you heard.

The most popular version of the Nigeria vs. India match suggests that the Super Eagles were in a match against India, possibly at the National Stadium in Lagos, but possibly not.

They were battered by their Indian adversaries and trailed by 99 goals as the game drew to a close.

They had been left chasing ghosts on the pitch, and the Nigerian players reported that the match ball was turning into a Lion or another animal whenever they tried to get close to it.

The goalkeepers reported seeing Lions and fireballs coming towards them whenever India had a shot on goal, leaving them with no option but to vacate the goal whenever India had a scoring opportunity, hence the 99 goals scored in 90 minutes.

Yet, in a moment of bravado or mercy, the Indian team decided that they would concede defeat to the Super Eagles if the Nigerian team could score one goal.

According to the legend, Samuel Okwaraji of blessed memory was brave enough to dare the Indians and managed to score the solitary goal for Nigeria, despite the ball turning into a massive stone and costing him his life in the process.

This is the story that has been passed down from generation to generation of football fans in Nigeria, but is there any merit to it?

Is the story of India beating Nigeria 99-1 true?

As the more perceptive among you would have figured out by now, the story was a complete hoax.

A team scoring more than once every minute is virtually impossible, and the fact that this was the most believable part of the story is saying something.

Despite the intriguing claims about dark magic being used by the Indian team, the idea of the ball turning into a Lion, stone, or other mysterious apparitions does not add up, given that there are no spectators who actually saw this game, despite the average football stadium being able to seat thousands of fans at once.

In addition to this, none of the players who supposedly took part in this match has ever come forward to give accounts of the game to any reputable publication, despite the potential for the story to be the scoop of the century. 

The facts behind Nigeria vs India

Nigeria and India have never played each other at the senior international level. There is no record of such a match taking place, and a FIFA World Cup qualifier between the two nations would be impossible as they are from different continental associations and there was no intercontinental playoff between CAF and AFC at the time the game was reported to have taken place.

FIFA did in fact ban India from participating in one World Cup, the 1954 edition (way before Nigeria had an independent football team), and it was due to the South Asian country's refusal to participate in the 1950 World Cup hosted by Brazil.

Another hoax about India’s refusal to play at the World Cup that year centres around their refusal to play with boots, but Indian cricketers had been playing with shoes long before that, meaning this was most likely untrue.

In truth, India was afraid that they would not be able to compete at the highest levels of football, because they had only qualified for the 1950 World Cup on technicalities, after Myanmar, Indonesia, and the Philippines all withdrew from the qualifying series, allowing India reach the tournament unopposed.

After 1950, India were banned from the qualification rounds for the 1954 World Cup and did not enter FIFA tournaments from 1958 to 1982, and then withdrew from the qualifiers for the 1990 edition as well.

Since then, they have been unable to qualify for the World Cup as the qualification process for the AFC got more difficult and the country’s focus shifted to other sports.

Why was the Nigeria vs India hoax kept alive for so long?

Like many of the best hoaxes in history, the Nigeria vs India scam was able to thrive because there were some parts of it that were true or verifiable.

India had indeed been banned from FIFA tournaments for a while and had chosen to abscond for a while longer.

Late Super Eagles hero Sam Okwaraji had also died on the field of play while representing Nigeria in a World Cup qualifier.

These elements of the story were true, and the crafting of the tale being told to an audience that already heavily believed in black magic was done excellently, with enough truth and enough sensation to make a great tale.

The lack of exposure to information from many people who heard and passed on the tale also helped the spread, since there was no real means of debunking such folktales and no way to authenticate the claims being made by those who peddled the story.

How did Samuel Okwaraji die?

The truth about Sam Okwaraji’s death is a lot less sensational, but every bit as tragic.

One of the only parts of the story that is remotely consistent with actual events, Okwaraji lost his life playing for the Super Eagles of Nigeria in a World Cup qualifier ahead of the 1990 World Cup.

While playing at the National Stadium in Lagos against Angola, Okwaraji was the victim of a heart condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which caused him to suffer a fatal heart attack with just 10 minutes to go in the match.

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