Shooting Stars had returned to continental football after 27 years. It is an occasion that should have carried the weight of history, yet large portions of the 10,000-capacity stadium remained unoccupied as the Nigerian club faced Tunisia's CS Sfaxien.
That was the first thing that struck me at the MKO Abiola Stadium on that faithful Saturday evening.
There were supporters in the stands, but they were concentrated in one section. Their numbers were modest, perhaps around 30 per cent of the stadium's capacity, and there were no visible travelling supporters from Tunisia to add to the atmosphere.
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From where I sat, however, the size of the crowd did not tell the whole story. A long, brightly coloured plastic horn kept producing its loud, monotonous buzz from the Shooting Stars section, a sound almost disproportionate to the number of people making it. The supporters sang, shouted and waited for their team to produce a moment worthy of the occasion.
When Lucky Emmanuel scored, that moment arrived. The reaction was immediate. The supporters erupted, celebrating a goal that carried more significance than the scoreline suggested, as it was Shooting Stars' first continental goal since their 27-year absence.
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For a few moments, the empty seats became irrelevant, and what happened in that small section was, in many ways, a better representation of Nigerian football than the empty sections surrounding it, because those supporters had not simply wandered into the stadium. They had travelled from Ibadan.
Shooting Stars supporters brought six buses from Ibadan on their own money
One of them, Prophet Joas Adeseko, told me that the supporters had brought six large buses from Ibadan, alongside smaller buses and cars, and had paid for the journey themselves. According to Adeseko, one of the larger buses cost almost ₦120,000, while the smaller buses cost around ₦60,000 each. Nobody had paid them to come, and nobody had guaranteed that the stadium would be full. They came because they love Shooting Stars.
“It is not the board that gave us the money; we spent our own money,” Adeseko told me. “We did not look to the board or anybody for it.”
He has followed Shooting Stars for decades, he said, and even though he comes from Kwara State, where he has been recognised as a supporter of Kwara United, his allegiance remains with the Ibadan club. “When we are going to Kwara to play against Kwara United, I will still follow Shooting Stars to Kwara,” he said, before adding the line that perhaps best explained what I was watching: “As far as I am concerned, I see them as my own. They are like my son. They are like a daughter to me. This club… is my heart. It is my blood. It is my soul.”
It is difficult to reconcile those words with the familiar narrative that Nigerians simply do not care about domestic football. The empty seats suggest indifference, but Adeseko's story suggests something more complicated. Nigerians still care. The problem is that Nigerian football has not figured out how to turn that passion into a consistently vibrant matchday culture, and that distinction matters.
This country does not lack football supporters. Anyone who has spent a weekend around Nigerian football knows how deeply the sport is embedded in everyday life. Nigerians will fill viewing centres for European football, argue passionately about Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United or Liverpool, spend money on foreign club jerseys and follow matches thousands of kilometres away as though the players were representing their own neighbourhoods. The question, to me, is not whether Nigerians love football. It is why so little of that passion reaches Nigerian stadiums, and Saturday's game offered some clues.
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Shooting Stars were not even playing in their traditional home. The club is based in Ibadan and normally plays at Lekan Salami Stadium, but the condition of the pitch has made the ground unsuitable for a continental fixture. That forced the club to take its African campaign to Abeokuta, meaning that supporters who wanted to see their team play an important home match first had to leave their actual home. They came anyway, and that is why I think the empty stadium should not be interpreted simply as evidence of an uninterested fan base.
If anything, the six buses from Ibadan expose the opposite problem. There is passion, but it is not being converted into scale. There is loyalty, but it is not being converted into a sustainable matchday culture. There are supporters willing to spend ₦120,000 on a bus to follow their club, but there are not enough people around the stadium doing the same thing. Perhaps Nigerian football has spent too much time asking why fans are not coming, rather than asking what it is doing to make them want to come.
A football match, to me, is not simply 90 minutes between two teams. It combines the experience of journeying to the stadium, the people met along the way, the colours in the stands, the noise before kick-off, the anticipation of a goal and the feeling that something is happening in the community. That experience is particularly important for domestic football because Nigerian clubs are competing for attention in a market where supporters can consume the world's biggest leagues from their phones and television screens. A Nigerian club cannot compete with the Premier League or Champions League simply by asking people to choose local football out of patriotism. It has to give them a reason, and that reason can begin with the basics. Having reliable fixtures, better pitches, accessible stadiums, proper promotion, organised supporters and a matchday environment that feels worth the journey.
Shooting Stars' situation is a perfect example of how difficult that can be. The club has one of the richest histories in Nigerian football, yet it cannot currently use its traditional home for an important continental fixture because of the playing surface, and the consequence is more than a logistical inconvenience. It weakens the connection between club and community. A club's home is part of its identity, and Lekan Salami Stadium is part of the memory of the club, its history, and the relationship between the team and Ibadan. Move the game elsewhere and supporters are being asked to recreate that connection in another city. Some will. Many will not, and that was visible in Abeokuta.
The city had the privilege of hosting an important continental fixture involving one of Nigeria's historic clubs, yet there was little evidence that the wider community had embraced the occasion. I cannot claim that Abeokuta does not love football; that would be too broad a conclusion from one evening. But inside the stadium, there was little visible sign that Shooting Stars had become part of the city's football consciousness. That, to me, is another challenge for Nigerian football. Clubs need communities, and communities need clubs. When a team plays in a city, supporters should not feel as though a match has simply arrived there by administrative accident. There should be anticipation, publicity and a sense that the event belongs to the people around it.
Free entry, on its own, cannot create that connection. Shooting Stars' match was free to attend, yet the stadium was still far from full, and that should tell us something. Price matters, but it is not everything. People pay to travel to Ibadan for Shooting Stars. They pay for buses. They buy jerseys. They sacrifice their time. What they are paying for is not merely entry into a stadium; they are paying for an emotional connection with their club, and the football authorities and clubs have to understand how valuable that connection is, because the supporters are already doing their part.
Adeseko and the other Shooting Stars supporters who travelled to Abeokuta did not wait for somebody to organise their devotion for them. They gathered themselves, raised money, hired buses and made the journey, and they were rewarded with a historic night as Shooting Stars won 1-0. But as the noise settled and the stadium returned to its normal rhythm, the empty sections remained. A small group of people had gone to extraordinary lengths to follow their club, while thousands of seats around them remained empty. That contrast stayed with me.
Perhaps that is the uncomfortable truth Nigerian football needs to confront. The problem is not that Nigerians have stopped loving football. The problem is that Nigerian football has not created enough pathways between that love and the stadium. The evidence is everywhere that a Nigerian can passionately follow a club in London without ever visiting England, know the starting eleven, discuss transfers, buy the shirt and watch every match, yet a historic Nigerian club can play an important continental fixture a few hours away and struggle to fill a 10,000-capacity stadium. That gap did not emerge overnight, and it will not disappear because clubs reduce ticket prices or launch another appeal for supporters. It requires rebuilding the relationship. It requires making Nigerian clubs feel local again. It requires giving supporters something they can belong to, not simply something they can watch. And it requires recognising that supporters like Adeseko are not an insignificant minority to be applauded and forgotten. They are evidence of what Nigerian football could look like if its existing passion were properly organised, nurtured and multiplied.
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I have watched Shooting Stars play at Lekan Salami Stadium twice, and Saturday's crowd in Abeokuta was noticeably sparse by comparison. The unusual circumstances of the fixture must be acknowledged, particularly because the club was playing away from Ibadan. But that explanation should not become an excuse. The six buses should tell us something too. They tell us that distance is not an absolute barrier when people feel strongly enough about their club. They tell us that supporters will spend their own money when they believe the occasion matters. They tell us that the passion is still alive, and the question Nigerian football should be asking is why there were six buses, rather than sixty.
On Saturday night, Shooting Stars returned to Africa after 27 years and scored a continental goal for the first time in nearly three decades. It was a historic occasion, and the supporters who travelled from Ibadan understood that. They brought their jerseys, their voices, their money and their devotion with them. The rest of the stadium, however, told another story.
Perhaps Nigerian football should stop looking at those empty seats and asking where the fans have gone. It should start looking at the supporters who were there and asking how to bring more of them along, because they have not disappeared. They are still travelling. They are still paying. They are still singing. They are still blowing their horns. And, as one Shooting Stars supporter reminded me in Abeokuta, they are still carrying their clubs in their hearts, their blood and their souls.
Shooting Stars now turn their attention to the second leg against CS Sfaxien; follow the CAF Confederation Cup first round fixtures and results on the official CAF website.
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