Moshe Beit Halevi`s Green Eagles: The Politicization of Sports Journalism in the Post-Independence Nigerian Press

Background: Sports pages provide a vantage point for viewing the tensions around nation-building, and postcolonial Nigeria is no exception. Following independence, coverage of the Green Eagles national football team reflected aspirations for a united Nigeria, but it was also an outlet for the deep political tensions plaguing Nigeria at this time. From 1960-1962, the coach of the national team was an Israeli, Moshe Beit Halevi. The press coverage of the Green Eagles and their Israeli coach provides a unique perspective on the political tensions that plagued Nigeria in those years. The disputes around Beit Halevi`s hiring as the first coach of independent Nigeria enabled sports journalists to become mouthpieces for both cohesion and discord.

Aims: This paper will examine the role that sports journalism played in nation-building in the early years of postcolonial Nigeria. Focusing on the first years of independence, the paper will examine press coverage of the Green Eagles in the leading national and regional newspapers of the era.

Methods: To date, there has been limited academic work examining the relationship between sportswriters and nationalist sentiment in African historical contexts. The study is based upon a review of football coverage in the sports sections of the West African Pilot, Daily Express, Daily Times, and the Citizen. The articles in the sports pages were subjected to narrative analysis that focused on the links between football coverage and broader political agendas, ideologies and conflicts in Nigeria. This analysis was aided by archive materials from the Israel State Archives, which provided important information regarding the coach, Moshe Beit Halevi.

Results: Journalists and fans articulated national identification and pride for the squad that invoked an imagined Nigerian nationhood that was not reproduced outside the sports pages. Nevertheless, criticisms of the team and its Israeli coach reveal that Green Eagles’ fandom was not insulated from the regional and ethnic tensions that shaped Nigeria’s history and international politics of the era.

Discussion: The sports pages constituted a meeting ground where the divergent and competing expectations of independence from across Nigeria were, at times, shadowed by a unifying aspiration for national pride. The politicization of sports coverage demonstrated that sports journalism had the potential to rally new solidarities, but also to reproduce and inflame political tensions.

Conclusion: Scholars have much to gain by paying more attention to the sports pages as a window into the complex dynamics of nation-building. Sports journalists have been mouthpieces for both Nigerian allegiance and sectorial conflict. To begin to understand the enormous complexities of Nigeria’s history, we need to look no further than the sports pages of the Nigerian press.