Former Nigerian national table tennis player, Yomi ‘The Hawk’ Bankole, is reportedly dead. He was 52.
The ace tennis player, according to one
of Nigeria’s national dailies, Punch Newspapers, died on Sunday, January
29, 2012 in Lagos and his corpse was deposited at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital(LASUTH) in Ikeja, Lagos State.
Bankole came to prominence in the 80s, sharing the spotlight with Musa Atanda, a renowned Nigerian tennis player, who was at the time on the top spot of table tennis on the African continent.
Prior to his death, Bankole, was
regarded as the oldest table tennis player in Nigeria. His fame however
dwindled in the early 90s owing to personal problems which plagued him
relentlessly, leading to a four-year stint in prison upon conviction for
armed robbery in 2004. In recent interviews, (conducted by 234next), he
bewailed some of his travails thus:
‘I will not say I regret not going
to school because so many of the problems came from me. During my
playing days, even graduates didn’t earn what I was getting but I joined
a bad gang and even got involved in drugs. So I squandered all my
money, property and everything. Later on, my house got burnt; I lost a
child, my mother and wife. There are players who came long after me and
are better off and they didn’t even have half of the education I had’ he stated.
‘Maybe God allowed it because he
wanted me to be close to him; I am a changed person now. I go to church;
I may do any other thing but I don’t forget God. I am not employed,
neither do I earn any form of income; some people give me N200, N500,
that’s how I survive’.
Secretary of the Nigeria Table Tennis Federation, Segun Oguntade commented on the Bankole’s death. ‘It
is a sad development but there is nothing we can do. Bankole gave his
all at both club and national level for the country. May his soul rest
in peace’, he told Punchng.com
He never regained his past glory, yet vowed to continue ‘to play table tennis for the rest of my life’.
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