After a promising football career, an ex U-17 star, Ikpeba Ebere Michael has turned to a meat seller and goat washer due to injury he sustained while playing for the Golden Eaglets of Nigeria few years back.
Ikpe is one of the numerous Nigerian footballers who became unfortunate because injuries set in and prevented them from furthering their careers.
Sharing his ordeal with a blogger, Lucky Udu on Social media, Ikpe noted that his troubles began in 2010 during preparations for the U-17 African Championship qualifiers against Congo.
According to him, he sustained a knee injury that not only hampered his performance in the qualifiers but ultimately derailed his footballing ambitions.
His words “I picked up my injury in 2010 when we were preparing to play AFCON U-17 qualifiers against Congo for the 2011 U-17 AFCON in Rwanda.
After picking the injury which bought me down and which made the coach moved me to second choice striker and with that I joined the team to travel to Congo for the qualifiers which I performed woefully because of my injury, I was dropped after we returned from Congo,” Ikpe explained.
After his woeful performance and subsequent sidelining due to injuries, Ikpe was sidelined for over a year. An MRI scan revealed a knee disease requiring surgery.
In a bid to resolve his problems and heal up, Ikpe was diagnosed but told he would not be able to further his career in football due to the sensitivity of the knee injury he sustained.
Ikpe reached out to the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) for assistance with his medical expenses, but was told that the government had not allocated any funds for treating injured footballers.
He said “I contacted the NFF which they made it clear to me that the government didn’t give them any money to treat any footballer injury,”he said.
Ikpe later went on to further his academics, became a graduate but could only manage working with butchers, washing goats and carrying buckets in the market to survive.
“For now I am helping butchers to wash goats and pick buckets from market to sustain myself after I graduated the university,” he concluded.
Nigeria lost 2-0 to Congo in an African Junior Championship first leg qualifier in 2010 for the U-17 AFCON in 2011 in Rwanda which Ikpe failed to qualify for.
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