Seven Days in Lagos

Arthur Ashe, Pelé and One Fateful Week In Nigeria

By Flinder Boyd

D onald Easum, the United States Ambassador to Nigeria, stood up at the Lagos Lawn Tennis Club and made a toast — to the virtues of tennis, he said, but also to the beginning of something wonderful. It was February 1976, and the opening ceremony of the first-ever major tennis tournament in Sub-Saharan Africa (outside of white-ruled Apartheid South Africa) was in full swing and Nigeria’s upper crust was in a celebratory mood. On the new hardcourt, the two top tennis players in Nigeria, who would form part of the 16-man singles tournament field, played an exhibition match. As more cocktails were served, Arthur Ashe, a three-time Grand Slam champion, worked his way around the edges of the court, shaking hands and patting dignitaries on the shoulder.

“He was very excited,” remembers Stan Smith, the former No. 1 player in the world who had also joined the field. “It was really special to have the tournament there.”

The Lagos Open was the brainchild of Lamar Hunt, owner of the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs and founder of the World Championship Tennis. The flashy upstart tour — a precursor to the current ATP — aimed to expand their brand. For Nigeria, a member of OPEC and flush with oil money, it was a chance to shine a spotlight on the country. The young leader of the Federal Military Government, General Murtala Muhammed, envisioned Nigeria as one of the world’s superpowers and bringing top athletes to his homeland would signal a new era for the West African nation.

A five-year agreement soon followed, and in quick order a $2 million stadium was constructed at Lagos Lawn Tennis Club, with tiered bleacher seating for up to 3,000.

But some had concerns, including Dick Stockton, a member of the U.S. Davis Cup team. He had seen footage of protests a month earlier in front of the U.S. Embassy, located less than a mile from the Tennis Club. Evidence of the CIA’s involvement in the Angolan civil war, which had erupted the previous year, had proved a flash point in the region and triggered anti-American demonstrations.

Shortly before the Lagos Open was scheduled to begin, Stockton approached John McDonald, the WCT’s international director, and asked if they would consider pushing back the tournament. “Anything can happen,” Stockton remembers saying. But McDonald assured him the U.S. State Department had given the go-ahead, and any worries were overblown.

When the players arrived at the Tennis Club for the opening day of matches on Monday, February 9th, they were greeted by armed soldiers at the entrance, alongside rows of posters announcing the event — WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP TENNIS AT YOUR DOORSTEP!! Under sweltering heat, the first match between American Bob Lutz and Wojtek Fibak of Poland, almost didn’t happen; 84 dozen tennis balls specific to the WCT tour had been lost in transit. Then, when replacements were found and rushed over, play was momentarily halted when a swarm of giant flying ants covered the lines.

Yet, despite the foreboding start, a buzz of excitement rippled through the crowd of nearly 1000. Anticipation was building for the coming showdown between Ashe and Smith, two of their generation’s finest, later in the week. For Ashe the tournament was something of a homecoming. The No. 1 player in the WCT had come to Nigeria in 1970 as part of a U.S. State Department tour. He was received by the country’s leader, General Yakubu Gowon, who stretched a scheduled fifteen-minute meeting into an hour and later boasted to the traveling press that he had seen Ashe “in the flesh.”

Ashe led local tennis clinics and remembered one eager eleven-year-old, Nduka Odizor, who arrived ready to practice carrying nothing but a wooden board. Ashe handed him a racquet and began turning the boy’s enthusiasm into technique.

To Ashe, tennis was an empowering force. It had carried him out from under the harsh realities of a segregated Richmond, Virginia, and he dreamed of spreading the game across Africa. When he won the 1975 Wimbledon Championships, the image of Ashe raising the Gentlemen’s Championship Trophy — a Black man dressed in lily-white before the all-white British crowd—captivated the world and turned him into an international icon. In Nigeria, he was affectionately given a Yoruba nickname loosely meaning, “the child who returns.”

On Thursday evening, before a partisan, near sellout crowd, Ashe proved too dominant in the Round-of-16 showdown. He outclassed Smith, who was playing with a heavily bandaged arm, 6-4, 7-5.

When the match was over, Ashe was driven to the U.S. Ambassador’s residence where — along with Dutchman Tom Okker, and American Jeff Borowiak — he was staying for the week of the tournament. The other players were scattered around the city. Some lodged in embassies and others with ex-pats. Smith housed at an American banker’s, while five others Americans — Stockton, Bob Lutz, Eddie Dibbs, Erik van Dillen, and Harold Solomon — were at the iconic six-story Federal Palace Hotel on Victoria Island, roughly a mile and half from the Tennis Club. Nigeria’s Declaration of Independence had been signed at the hotel 16 years before.

The following morning, Friday, February 13th, organizers were anticipating a big crowd for the tournament quarterfinals. Stockton, the “uptight,” oft runner-up was typically awake before the other players, and that morning was no different. As he prepared for his evening match he received an unusual call.

“There’s been a coup,” Paul Shevlik, the WCT tour manager, said simply. All matches would be postponed.

Stockton relayed the information to the other players, but by midday, there had been no reports on TV or any updates from the WCT. The players at the hotel headed to the pool and waited for further news. As they spread out in the sun they spotted a familiar face — soccer superstar Pelé was lounging on the other side of the pool. The three-time World Cup winner with Brazil, and newly signed New York Cosmos player, had arrived from Mauritius two days earlier as part of a week-long promotional tour sponsored by Pepsi.

Stockton approached. Pelé explained that he’d been contracted to take part in an exhibition match that weekend. He was meant to play one half with IICC Shooting Stars of Ibadan and the other with national champion Enugu Rangers, but with rumors of political unrest, Pelé told Stockton, “There's no way.”

Moments later, the two were interrupted. Just on the other side of the pool fence, a chorus of combat boots slapped against concrete. Government soldiers carrying submachine guns encircled the hotel. “It was a whole battalion,” Lutz recalls.

Soon a voice came on the pool loudspeaker: “Everyone please get up slowly and make your way back inside the hotel.”

···

In the early hours of that Friday, General Murtala Muhammed, 37, Nigeria’s military ruler, was traveling from his home on Banana Island to army headquarters—less than five miles away—accompanied by an aide-de-camp, an orderly, and his driver, when they were slowed by traffic. He had been in power just seven months, following a bloodless coup that removed his predecessor, General Gowon, who had governed through a turbulent decade. In that short time, Muhammed had endeared himself to the masses.

In his first speech in power the fiery general announced that the corrupt Federal Executive Council would be “relieved with immediate effect.” He then dismissed or retired over 10,000 public officials for incompetence and indolence while demanding “sacrifice and self-discipline at all levels of our society.” Muhammed added seven new states to ease ethnic tension, set a timeline for civilian rule, and aimed to move the capital from Lagos to Abuja.

“He gave the country a dynamic sense of direction and purpose,” Max Siollun wrote in Oil, Politics and Violence: Nigeria’s Military Coup Culture. “Nigerians began to feel at last that they had the dynamic leader they craved.”

Just five years earlier, the Nigerian Civil War — a conflict between government forces and the secessionist state of Biafra — had ravaged the country, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. Now, with the prospect of new-found stability, a cultural renaissance, bubbling since independence, was flourishing. Fashion was bold and inventive, and psych-laced funk and Afrobeat music blared throughout the capital.

Even Fela Kuti, the pioneer of Afrobeat music, and a searing critic of the Federal Military Government, threw his support behind the General. “This government sees the sense of having a change,” Fela told a reporter, according to author Michael Veal. “We are with them.”

The defining moment of Muhammed’s short reign came during a speech at the Organisation of African Unity conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. At the time, the Angolan civil war was a pressing international issue. What started as a local skirmish had spiraled into a three-pronged conflict and then became a Cold War proxy. The CIA and the apartheid South African government aligned with both the National Liberation Front (FNLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), while a coalition led by the Soviet Union and Cuba, as well as various African leaders, including Muhammed, supported the Marxist Popular Movement for Liberation in Angola (MPLA).

Muhammed’s position rankled US officials. Up to that point, the two countries had a transactional, if not cordial relationship. Muhammed had overseen unprecedented US investment in Nigeria, and Ambassador Easum privately referred to him as a “hustler,” both as a pejorative and an honorific. President Gerald Ford decided to send a personal letter urging the Nigerian leader to divest from the MPLA. But when the volatile Muhammed read the missive, “he hit the roof,” journalist Femi Olugbile wrote, and it was released in full to the local press.

The next day the headlines were unforgiving — “Insult To Black Dignity!” one read. The episode sparked days of intense protests outside the U.S. Embassy that included a man climbing up the building’s flagpole and ripping down the American flag.

In Addis Ababa, Muhammed’s booming, chopped voice reverberated throughout the horseshoe shaped auditorium. “Africa has come of age,” he bellowed, his voice laced with defiance. “It is no longer under the orbit of any extra continental power. It should no longer take orders from any country, however powerful.” He then chastised the U.S. for “maintaining white supremacy and minority rule in Africa.”

When he sat down after the 10-minute speech, a thunderous applause reverberated throughout Africa Hall. His words became a rallying cry for Pan-Africanism, and the legendary South African singer Miriam Makeba immortalized the speech in the anti-apartheid song, “Murtala.”

The General, however, wasn’t without his detractors. He was criticized for his lack of diplomatic nous and his sometimes-ham-fisted policies. Others whispered about his role in some of the worst atrocities during the civil war. Whatever one thought of General Muhammed, it was undeniable that in a short period of time he had charted Nigeria on an entirely new course.

Just before 8:30 that morning — 34 days after his speech in Addis Ababa — his car came to a stop on Ikoyi Road. Men from a nearby gas station armed with semi-automatic weapons approached the general’s Mercedes-Benz 230.6 and fired indiscriminately into the car. One man stood casually in the middle of the street, reloaded, and continued shooting. General Muhammed, his driver, and the aide-de-camp were killed at the scene.

Shortly after, just a few hundred yards from the assassination, Lt. Col. B. S. Dimka, a stocky man with a globular face and curly mustache, rushed into the nearby Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation studios, home to Radio Nigeria. An army veteran, he slipped into the bathroom and changed from civilian clothes into his uniform.

Within a few minutes, a long, meandering statement from the “Young Revolutionaries” was read aloud across Nigeria’s airwaves:

“General Muhammed’s deficiency has been detected,” it began somewhat cryptically. “All military governors have no powers over the states they govern.” Dimka warned the public that acts of looting or raids would result in death. And finally: “Everyone should remain calm.”

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Stockton and the other four American tennis players staying at the Federal Palace Hotel scurried downstairs and into a waiting van escorted by two U.S. Marines. The vehicle then sped to a private residence that housed an American diplomat and his wife. At nearly every intersection there were checkpoints. As they neared their destination in Ikoyi, an affluent neighborhood of Lagos, the van attempted to turn onto Macpherson Avenue but was commanded to stop by Nigerian soldiers. Dimka’s residence was nearby, and no one was allowed to pass. The U.S. Marine who was driving, wouldn’t listen to the soldiers’ instructions and tried to drive around the roadblock.

“He thought because we’re all Americans, we were above their rules,” Stockton remembers. “He was being a jerk.”

The group of government soldiers raised their guns and pointed them against the van’s window. From the backseat, Solomon yelled: “Do what the fuck they say and go another way!”

When the Americans finally arrived at their new residence, a one-story home with four bedrooms and a large backyard, they settled into a virtual oasis, cut off from the ominous feeling around town. The five players — Lutz, Stockton, Dibbs, Van Dillen, and Solomon — travelled together on the WCT circuit throughout the year and had an unusually close bond. They often paid their own way, and it wasn’t uncommon to share a room with that evening’s opponent then split a beer afterwards.

With nothing to do over the following hours the players soon got antsy. Van Dillen jumped out of the living room closet and “scared the shit out of us,” Lutz says. They tossed around a football and “hunted” lizards outside in the garden with darts. At one point, Dibbs missed his target and lodged a dart into Lutz’s leg.

“We were like fraternity kids,” Lutz says. “Like Animal House.”

Meanwhile, behind the walls of the U.S. Ambassador’s residence — a sprawling, lush complex in Ikoyi, with a pool and palm trees surrounding the two-story colonial home with floor-to-ceiling windows — there was a decidedly different energy. Ambassador Easum was holed up in his study trying to piece together what he knew, while firing back wires to Washington and across the world.

TO AMEMBASSY LUSAKA:

THERE HAS BEEN A COUP ATTEMPT IN LAGOS BUT MOTIVES AND OUTCOMES STILL UNCLEAR.

TO SECSTA WASHDC

DESERTED STREETS.

With no official announcement about General Muhammed’s assassination, rumors began to fill the void. Soon, student demonstrations broke out in Lagos, Benin City, and Ibadan. Some suspected the coup aimed to re-instate General Gowon, who was in exile in the United Kingdom. Others wondered if it had something to do with the Angolan civil war.

At some point that morning, Arthur Ashe raced back through the doors of the Ambassador’s residence. He’d been in the middle of a round of golf just a few hundred yards from the site of the assassination when he’d heard a barrage of gunshots ring out. In the dining room, under soaring ceilings, he sat alongside Okker, a stoic Dutchman and his occasional doubles partner, and Borowiak, a yoga-loving Bay Area hippie. The three, united by a sense of uncertainty, waited for any news on the coup. “That’s all we would talk about,” Okker says.

Ambassador Easum was increasingly concerned. A widely respected expert in African foreign policy, he had been Henry Kissinger’s Assistant Secretary of State before he was unceremoniously dumped when he agreed to meet with Angolan MPLA leaders. Easum was then sent to Nigeria as a sort of “exile,” he later explained, and had a tumultuous relationship with Muhammed. Now, with Muhammed assassinated, and a power vacuum forming, he feared more protests.

One particular cable was alarming:

THERE ARE ALLEGATIONS THAT THE US WAS BEHIND THE COUP. BECAUSE OF OUR WELL-PUBLICIZED DIFFERENCES.
···

When Dimka burst into the live studio at Radio Nigeria, he was accompanied by two accomplices, one of them an employee of the station. Dimka was unshaven and reeked of alcohol. “Any resistance from these people,” he told his conspirators. “Shoot.”

Rosaline Ogbangwor, a morning host, hadn’t yet heard of the coup attempt, but she saw his military garb and his unholstered gun, and sensed something was amiss. Just do what you’re told, she thought. Dimka snatched her seat and seized control of the microphone, then recorded his rambling announcement littered with mistakes. It was repeated every 15 minutes, inter-spliced with British military music from the First World War.

A career soldier, Dimka was a vengeful character. He had risen through the ranks despite his “instability, womanizing, and plentiful alcohol consumption,” Soillun wrote. He assassinated his superior during Nigeria’s first coup in 1966 and later hunted down and executed a Biafran colonel in violation of a ceasefire. He had fought alongside Muhammed in the country’s power struggle ten years earlier but resented the General’s authority and his often-haphazard army promotion policy. Along with a cadre of disgruntled mid-level officers, Dimka drew up a “hit list” of high-ranking officers. The group aimed to return General Gowon to power.

But there was a problem with the Young Revolutionaries’ coup from the start: they seemed to have little conviction in their cause. One would-be assassin froze and allowed Muhammed’s Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General T. Y. Danjuma, to escape. Another mistook a lower ranking soldier for General Muhammed’s second-in-command. Dimka himself had been up all night drinking champagne and forgot to bring three of the six pages of his manifesto to be read on air.

As his words reverberated across the country, forces loyal to Muhammed decided to send Colonel Ibrahim Babangida, a close friend of Dimka, to assess the situation. Babangida had also been on the hit list but had so far been unharmed. In the early afternoon, he drove a motorbike to the station to avoid detection. When he arrived, Dimka was visibly shaking. The coup was falling apart and Dimka asked his friend to return with amnesty papers for all coup plotters.

Colonel Babangida did return, but he wasn’t alone. Dozens of government soldiers charged the station blasting infantry rifles and submachine guns.

Meanwhile, Ogbangwor and her colleagues were still enclosed in the sound-proof studio. “When the firing started, the walls were shaking, like a bomb went off,” she later said. She instinctively turned off the military music and dove under the mixing console. Bullets pierced the glass partition, ripping through stacks of records.

After 10 minutes of gun blasts, government forces took control of the station. On-air, there was radio silence for more than an hour. Then a recorded voice: “This is Radio Nigeria.” Followed by popular highlife music.

Ogbangwor and her colleagues were led outside to safety as soldiers searched the building. Many of the Young Revolutionaries had escaped, including Dimka. He slipped away with his gun, a transistor radio, batteries, and, curiously, a book detailing the exploits of an elite American unit in World War II called The Devil’s Brigade. Meanwhile, the airport and all roads out of Lagos were shut down.

···

At Federal Palace Hotel, where the country’s most famous guest was staying, the situation was increasingly dire. One of Pelé’s bodyguards, assigned to him by Pepsi, had witnessed a coup-related shooting right in front of the hotel. The Nigerian army raided the grounds looking for gunmen, and by evening, food had become scarce. The hotel restaurant began rationing meals to its guests.

Pelé was due in New York the following Tuesday for the first day of Cosmos training camp, but he was unable to call his family or the coaching staff as the phone lines at the hotel were down. The Brazilian ambassador to Nigeria, Geraldo de Heráclito Lima, snuck in to check on Pelé and relay messages from his wife, Rose, back home. With limited information leaking from Nigeria, she was terrified that her husband would be captured and used as a pawn. Just months earlier, masked gunman had taken hostages at luxury hotels in Beirut.

Pelé, however, was surprisingly calm. The coup attempt produced a quiet reprieve, and for the first time in a long time, the most recognizable soccer player on the planet had nowhere to go. At 35 years old, he had spent most of his adult life on the road, a global icon since the 1958 World Cup, when, as a 17-year-old, he had scored twice in the final to beat Sweden. To capitalize on the young phenom’s fame, his club team Santos headed out on grueling international tours. “Whenever they had a minute, they played a game,” Pelé’s friend and former business manager Giora Breil remembers.

What Pelé encountered in the far reaches of the globe was something beyond worship. In Basel, Switzerland, after he scored five goals in an exhibition match, the sold-out crowd spilled over the barriers and carried Pelé on their shoulders around the stadium. In Plymouth, England, there was a near riot when Santos threatened not to take the field over a pay dispute. But it was in Nigeria where Pelé’s power felt transcendent.

In 1969, Santos had scheduled a game in Lagos, and then another two weeks later in Benin City. At the time, the civil war raged. As the legend goes, Pelé’s arrival did something that no general or diplomat could accomplish. A 48-hour cease fire was called to allow safe passage for civilians to travel to the matches. For two days at least, the story went, he stopped the civil war.

The tall tale was later reported as fact by Time, The Guardian and CNN among others. Journalist Olaojo Aiyegbayo has since disproved this version of events. But the oft-told lie reveals within it a truth: in the late 1960s and the years that followed, it was completely plausible that Pelé could bring peace to a war-torn nation.

Over the years, the Brazilian legend did little to correct the story. And why would he? In 1975, he joined the Cosmos for $2 million a year, ten times more than Hank Aaron’s salary that year, making him by far the highest paid athlete in the country. The figure was so astronomical, and his signing in America so unlikely, that it led to its own mythmaking. As the story went, it was Secretary of State Kissinger who had engineered the signing and facilitated high-level clearance for Pelé to leave Brazil.

In actuality, the move to the U.S. was not so complicated. Pelé had been felled by shady business partners and was in debt that he didn’t want the public to know about.

“He got fucked over a million times,” Breil says. Pelé needed the money, and his value was tied to his legend, so he needed the myths to persist.

On Saturday morning in Kano, 850 miles from Lagos, General Muhammed was buried with full Muslim rites. Seven days of official mourning were declared. Shortly after, Lieutenant General Olusegun Obasanjo assumed command of the Supreme Military Council and addressed the somber nation:

“We are once again passing through a critical period in the history of this country,” he said. “For me personally, this has been one of the saddest moments in my life.”

He wasn’t alone. As images were shown of the funeral, reporters noted citizens from Lagos to Kano publicly weeping. With emotions still raw, Federal Commissioner for Sports Olufemi Olutoye, reached out to Pelé with a request: would he be willing to play some form of the exhibition match that had been postponed? After all, he told the Brazilian star, he was the only one who could “calm the people.”

Pelé was unsure. He couldn’t see the logic of gathering thousands of people together at such a precarious moment. But also, Pelé just wanted more time to relax. He had learned to keep his circle small and was in Lagos with his two most trusted companions: his confidant, Julio Mazzei, a physical education teacher known as “The Professor,” and his acoustic guitar, which he took with him everywhere.

As he sat in room 409 shielded from both the demands of his life and the chaos outside his window, he picked up his guitar, strummed a few notes, and began to sing.

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By Sunday, with the Young Revolutionaries on the run, Lagos was relatively calm. WCT Director John McDonald and the tournament hosting committee agreed to continue the matches at the Tennis Club. The doubles portion would be cancelled, but if they could finish the remaining singles matches, the next tournament in Rome would start just a day late. When the players found out, they were incredulous. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Stockton told McDonald.

But they had little choice. Those without visas had given up their passports on arrival. If they finished the tournament, the players were told, their passports would be returned and they could leave, even though, officially, the country’s borders and airports were still closed.

“Guys weren’t happy,” Stockton remembers. “No one wanted to stick around.”

Ashe, however, had been the one to push for play to continue. He knew if the tournament wasn’t concluded, it might never return to Nigeria. For him the tournament was personal. He’d even suggested playing the remaining matches at courts behind the U.S. Ambassador’s residence.

When play resumed that morning at the Lagos Lawn Tennis Club, the stands were nearly full, the Guardian reported, despite the lack of publicity for the matches. The tennis, however, was poor. “There was no energy,” Stockton remembers. Ashe, Lutz, Stockton, and Borowiak easily advanced to the following day’s semi-final.

That afternoon, Pelé left his hotel for the first time in two days. He was a special guest at a luncheon at the Brazilian Embassy along with Ambassador Easum and his lodgers Ashe, Okker, and Borowiak. In the glittering garden of the old English colonial building, the mood was light. The prominent guests “said hello, took pictures, and talked a bit,” Okker remembers. There were cocktails and friendly conversation. After the upheaval of the last two days, Okker continues, it almost felt “normal.” Yet there was something remarkable about the moment. Two of the most successful Black athletes in the world were meeting face-to-face in Africa’s most powerful country, in the most unlikely of circumstances.

If they had time to speak about their winding journeys to this moment, it was only briefly. And if they did, the conversation is lost to history. What is sure is that both men understood what few others could: the toll of being so driven; of being successful yet separate; of being revered by a white public yet still dismissed. They were nearing the end of their respective careers and facing a sort of crossroads. They were navigating existential questions of identity: Who am I without the sport? What legacy do I want to leave behind?

Privately, Pelé struggled with those questions. He admitted that the adoration he felt since he was 17 made him feel “a race apart,” he wrote. He identified, not as Black, but rather as “famous.” Others, however, saw the hope he inspired. Kwame Nkrumah, former President of Ghana and founding member of the Organisation of African Unity, paid a small fortune to host Santos in the early 1960s, knowing that Pelé’s presence in his country would help promote Pan-Africanism.

Back home in Brazil, a ruthless military dictatorship had been terrorizing the country since 1964, and many felt Pelé not only avoided conflict with the regime, but that his actions emboldened it. A quiet disapproval of Pelé for refusing to stand up for the common man, and especially Black Brazilians, was growing. Caju, a former teammate on the Brazilian National Team called him, “a submissive Black man,” in a recent documentary. “Just one statement from Pelé would have gone a long way.” But what would Pelé say? Silence had long afforded him a safeguard. “If I had to stop or shout every time I was racially abused,” he once said, “every game would have been stopped.”

Ashe had known that same struggle to speak up. During much of the 1960s he was racked with a “sense of shame” that he wasn’t on the front lines of the civil rights movement, he wrote in his memoir, Days of Grace. Instead, he was “elegantly stroking a tennis ball.” Perhaps if the two superstars had a few moments alone during that sunny afternoon in Lagos, the pair might have found a shady tree in the garden and reflected on their experiences. Pelé could have opened up about his inner strife. And in turn, Ashe, in his trademark understated way, might have told Pelé the story of how he was able to find his own voice.

After the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in 1968, something inside of him sparked. And in 1973, Ashe made a career and life-defining decision: he pushed for inclusion in the white-only South African Open. Many were appalled, including George Houser, executive of the American Committee on Africa, who called it “a public relations victory” for the South African government. Ashe was torn, and likely underestimated the pushback. He consulted his friend, the poet Nikki Giovanni, who convinced him to go. “Information is key,” she told him. Ashe understood that if tennis was to take root on the Continent — if he was going to inspire players like 11-year-old Nduka Odizor — he couldn’t avoid South Africa. But when he arrived, he was struck — not by the severity of apartheid, but by how familiar it felt. “I saw the sneer of superiority on the face of many whites,” he wrote. “And the look of obsequiousness, fatalism, cynicism, and despair on the faces of many blacks.”

He lost in the final that year to Jimmy Connors, but he began to understand his power. As Mark Mathabane, a South African who had watched Ashe in Johannesburg, wrote in his memoir Kaffir Boy, seeing Ashe play allowed him to “dream of the possibilities.”

When the luncheon ended, the two shook hands. Pelé returned to his hotel while Ashe and his fellow tennis players headed back to the U.S. Ambassador’s residence to prepare for the semi-finals. If Ashe couldn’t win in South Africa — a tournament he returned to three times — then he was determined to win the first Lagos Open. But when he arrived at the courts the following morning, something was very wrong.

···

When Nigerians picked up Monday’s Daily Times, a newspaper in Lagos, they were confronted by an explosive article that confirmed an earlier Reuters story. Roughly 40 minutes after the assassination of General Muhammed, Dimka stormed the UK High Commission and demanded the British High Commissioner relay an urgent message to former leader General Gowon, who was studying at the University of Warwick.

The request was rejected, but the High Commissioner, Sir Martin Le Quesne, didn’t report the indiscretion to Nigerian authorities until nearly four hours later.

“For once extra territorial integrity should succumb to the wishes of the Nigerian people,” the article read. Then the writer called for all Western embassies to be searched.

Soon, a boisterous crowd formed in front of the U.K. High Commission. Protestors shattered windows with rocks and a handful burst through the entrance and hung signs along the balcony. A few hundred yards away, more protestors marched in front of the American Embassy. “Down with the CIA,” one sign read. “To Hell With America And Their Agent.” The crowd swelled quickly.

Meanwhile, at the Lagos Lawn Tennis Club, players had arrived for the 8 a.m. semi-final match between Stockton and Lutz, but curiously there were no guards at the gate. Stockton beat Lutz in straight sets, then Ashe faced Borowiak in the other semi-final. Roughly 350 fans, including Ambassador Easum, watched as Ashe won a riveting first set tiebreak.

Tied 1-1 in the second set, Ashe toed the baseline and lobbed the ball skyward. As it descended, a man in a military uniform charged into the stadium yelling from the gallery: “What are you doing here? We are in mourning! Are you mad?”

Three young soldiers rushed the crowd. “There was panic,” Ambassador Easum said. A French spectator was beaten, a reporter from the Daily Mail was struck on the head with a gun, and Easum was pushed to the ground. The rest of the spectators dashed for the exits.

Ashe remained on the court, stunned. As he moved to pick up his things, a pistol was shoved into his back. He could feel the cold barrel through his sweaty shirt. “I was frightened,” he said. “Very frightened.”

When there was no gun blast, he snatched his things and raced out of the stadium. Outside, vehicles were waiting to whisk the players away. Ashe jumped into a car along with Borowiak, but they were held up in traffic. They turned and just yards away, the same army captain that had stormed the court was now mercilessly beating a man on a motorcycle. Ashe and Borowiak abandoned the car and made a run for it.

Meanwhile, Easum and a young marine had escaped the melee and were headed toward the U.S. Embassy on foot. A few hundred yards from the Tennis Club, they were suddenly engulfed by a fast-moving protest. “We couldn’t get out of the street,” Easum said. He braced for the worst. Then, as if they’d turned invisible, the protestors “walked right through us.” Further down the road, as Ashe and Borowiak searched for an escape route, a limousine swerved in front of them, and the door swung open. The Hungarian Ambassador to Nigeria, who had been watching the match, told the players to climb in, then skirted them to safety.

Tournament organizers were searching for answers. The soldiers appeared to have gone rogue. McDonald had asked Federal Commissioner for Sports Olutoye if the WCT needed written approval to restart and was told they didn’t. There were also sporting events going on in Kano, General Muhammed’s home state, and Fela Kuti was scheduled to perform “mourning songs” at the National Stadium.

But the emotions that had been brewing since Friday were bursting. “The protests reflected sadness,” says David Aworawo, a professor at the University of Lagos, who was in primary school that day. “The people feared that the progress made would be truncated.”

Back in the States, President Ford had been briefed on the unrest and the potential threat to some of the country’s top tennis stars. According to Stockton, Ford called the Nigerian government with an urgent message: “Either you get our guys out, or we're going in.”

That evening, McDonald called the players to say he’d secured the passports and to be ready. Pelé was still holed up at the Federal Palace Hotel. The manager of his promotional Pepsi tour contacted Ambassador Easum hoping to hitch a ride with the tennis players out of the country. In the end, however, he was told there would be no room.

At 3:30 a.m. Tuesday morning, 14 tennis players, two tournament organizers, and two traveling journalists were picked up in vans and driven through the desolate streets of Lagos toward the airport. “It was very eerie,” Lutz says. There were no other cars, and few lights on. When they arrived, they saw Nigerian troops surrounding the airport. On the runway sat a solitary military aircraft.

Authorities verified paperwork and one-by-one the players and the rest of the traveling party boarded the plane that would take them to Accra, the capitol of Ghana, where they’d then catch a commercial flight to their next tournament in Rome. Theirs would be the first aircraft to depart Lagos since the coup attempt four days prior. When the plane finally took off, the cabin erupted in cheers.

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Just over a week later, Pelé was in Miami riding around on a green motorbike too small for his body. “Come on, baby!” he exclaimed, flashing his trademark toothy grin. In front of him, on the set for a commercial he was shooting for a Japanese company, three photographers snapped dozens of pictures as he jerked around on the glorified scooter. “Ah, I think I figured out how to make the turn,” he said, laughing.

He’d arrived in Miami on the back of a whirlwind journey out of Nigeria. After the tennis players left, he spent three more days in the Federal Palace Hotel waiting for the airport to reopen. Finally, a four-seat executive plane was arranged to take him to Accra, where he stayed the night at the Brazilian embassy. After a flight to Zurich, then New York, he had two days to meet up with his team. Then, he jetted down to Miami to shoot the commercial and celebrate his 10th wedding anniversary with Rose and their kids.

At least for a few hours on the set, things were back to normal. His kids climbed on the bike and local reporters took turns asking about the upcoming season. “It should be a very good year for everyone,” he said. Then he was asked about Nigeria and his smile turned weary. “It was my first coup d’état,” he said. “And I hope my last.”

In Lagos, the nationwide manhunt for Lt. Col. Dimka ended in Eastern Nigeria on March 6th, 1976. A hotel manager alerted authorities that Dimka was in the company of a prostitute under the pseudonym “Mr. C. Godwin.” After a chase, he was captured at a police checkpoint and then paraded in front of the press. Dimka proudly admitted to planning the coup with General Gowon’s help. (Gowon denied his part but was stripped of his rank and pension.)

A few days later, on Bar Beach, just outside of Lagos, 32 co-conspirators, including a Radio Nigeria employee, were tied to poles and executed by firing squad. On May 15th the sordid saga ended with Dimka grinning as he was executed at Kirikiri prison. Shortly after, the Lagos airport was renamed in honor of General Murtala Muhammed.

The players returned to the WCT circuit on schedule. When the tour moved to Caracas, Venezuela, at the end of March, tournament directors decided that during an off day they would finally complete the Lagos Open. So, in early April, Ashe beat Borowiak in the semi-final, but lost to Stockton in the final — 6-3, 6-2. It would be the only time Stockton would ever beat Ashe, and five decades later, Stockton remains the only WCT Lagos Open champion, as the tournament never returned.

In 1977, Pelé’s career came to a beautifully scripted end in front of 77,000 fans at Giants Stadium in New Jersey. In an exhibition match, he played the first half for his hometown club Santos scoring a goal, then switched sides and played the second half with the Cosmos. When the final whistle sounded, surrounded by two sets of teammates, he put his hands to his face and burst into tears. He was carried off the field like a king. For the most part, he didn’t speak about his week in Nigeria, but years later one curious detail seemed to emerge. While trying to exit Lagos after the coup, the story goes, Pelé crept through the airport undetected wearing a pilot’s uniform as a disguise. The account is thought to have come from the since-deceased Brazilian ambassador to Nigeria, and although Pelé mentioned it in his 2006 autobiography, it has never been fully confirmed. For now, it remains just a part of the myth of Pelé.

As for Ashe, he continued to advocate for South African liberation, and affirmative action at home. He won his final WCT tournament in 1978, but his body was giving out. He suffered a mild heart attack at 38 while teaching youth tennis in Queens, ultimately leading to quadruple bypass surgery. Three years later, he had a second bypass operation. To help with the weakness he felt post-surgery, doctors prescribed a blood transfusion. Ashe didn’t know it then, but his new blood was infected with the HIV virus that would eventually lead to AIDS and his death ten years later.

But at the time, while recovering from surgery, Ashe wanted to watch tennis. The 1983 Wimbledon championships were on, and Ashe was transfixed. There, on Centre Court, at the All England Lawn Tennis Club, was Nigerian Nduka Odizor. The same kid he had handed a racquet to and helped introduce to the game 13 years earlier in Lagos was locked in a back-and-forth opening round match against four-time major champion Guillermo Vilas.

For years, Ashe had held onto bitterness about the collapse of the Lagos Open. He once told a journalist, “The saddest thing,” he said, “is that it may be the end of big tennis in Black Africa, just as it was beginning.” What he didn’t know was that during the intervening years, his legacy had carried on in Nigeria.

In the fifth set, up 5 games to 2, Odizor smashed a backhand volley to upset the former champ. As Ashe watched from his living room, Odizor, wearing the lily-white attire of Wimbledon, lifted his head and raised his hands to the sky.

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The story though, doesn’t quite end there. Back in Brazil, Pelé settled into the retired life, and soaked up the acclaim that comes with being the world’s greatest soccer player. But away from the spotlight an inner strife lingered.

The following year, in 1984, as Brazil’s military dictatorship was flailing and anti-government protests swept the country, something inside of Pelé sparked. He made a move so uncharacteristic it sent a stir through the country.

For the April issue of Placar magazine, a mustachioed Pelé posed wearing a grey fedora, overlooking Rio De Janeiro’s Pavão-Pavãozinho favela, in a yellow Brazil jersey with the words, Diretas Já! — Elections Now! — scrawled across his chest. He was flanked by a group of local Black Brazilians. The image was so disorienting many Brazilians thought it was a publicity stunt.

It’s unlikely Ashe ever saw the photo, but if he did he wouldn’t have mistaken it for a stunt. He knew better. The message was clear, and meant far more than a call for elections from the country’s most famous son. Ashe’s old friend, that he’d once shared a drink with on a dreamlike Sunday in Lagos, had finally found his voice.

Flinder Boyd is a journalist based in Los Angeles. He is the founder of The Vertical History.

ISSUE ONE

May 2026