I belong to the biggest world cult – Mike Idoko

Football manager, Mike Idoko

Mike Idoko, the Vice Chairman Lobi Stars Football Club of Makurdi, hails from Benue State and was born 51 years ago in Jos, Plateau State but was bred in Sabon-Gari area in Kano town, Kano State.
He is among the new breed Nigerian football administrators having carved a niche for himself as manager and partially as a player, he does not need much introduction as far as football is concern in the country, he is an astute administrator who knows his onions.
He started from BCC Lions of Gboko to Lobi Stars of Makurdi, to Jasper United of Onitsha to the defunct Nigeria Port Authority of Lagos (NPA FC) to Warri Wolves of Warri, Delta State to Sunshine Stars of Akure, under the supervision of OSFA, whom he managed and shone like a star and now back with Lobi Stars.
Idoko came to limelight unheralded in 2000, when in his first major assignment; he led Lobi Stars to win an away match in Angola which qualified the team for the group stage of the CAF Champions League and lost in the quarter finals to Heart of Oaks FC of Ghana who eventually won the competition.
In 2012, Idoko repeated such feat against another Angolan team Recreativo do Libolo, when most Nigerians believed it was a mission impossible for Sunshine Stars to score 3 goals that would qualify the Akure darling team to the next round of the CAF Champions League few years ago.
But before then, despite leading Lobi Stars from Division Three to Two and to Division One, the team also picked Premier League ticket and won the first Pepsi Cola League in 1999 within three years, nobody gave him any chance to perform.
E.D, as he is fondly called by his admirers has so far been the only successful football club administrator in Nigeria who has worked and lived in four geo-political zones of the country.
The well-travelled former member of the Nigeria Premier League (NPL) left Lobi Stars to face challenges elsewhere and teamed up with the defunct Jasper United of Onitsha, where his astonishing performance bolstered the management of the defunct Nigeria Port Authority (NPA) to invite him to take charge of the team as the team manager. He did not disappoint as he used his managerial skills to transform the club who were battling relegation to a promotion chasing side with just a season in charge and secured promotion in 2003 to the elite division.
After NPA was sold to Delta State Government and renamed Warri Wolves, he was elevated from the Team Manager to the General Manager having heard about his track records, and after just a season he secured promotion to the Premier League and the following season booked a place in the Orange CAF Confederation Cup.
The Benue-born administrator who’s happily married to his beautiful heartthrob Mrs. Monica Idoko with four kids’ two boys, two girls, in 2009, was wooed to manage the Ondo State Football Agency.
Former Ondo State Governor Dr. Segun Mimiko, had been following the track records. So when approached he was contented with Governor Mimiko’s ideology about the game of football that offered and employed him as Executive Director of the Football Agency, and signed three years contract with a task of developing grassroots players and producing a lot of Idokos among the indigenes of Ondo State.
Idoko achieved a lot under two years of his contract by clinching a continental ticket for Sunshine Stars and booked semi-final spot twice in the CAF Champions League and CAF Confederation Cup, he worked assiduously in ensuring Rising Stars secured promotion to the Premier League, and Sunshine Queens nearly clinched the female league and the academy under Ondo State Football Agency performed extremely well.
Speaking on the impression most soccer loving Nigerians have for him as a magical administrator, while some tag him as Mr ‘Fix It’, he noted; “They can call me whatever name they like, but I have told you the secret behind my success, the little achievement I have recorded was not my doing, it is the will of God.
“The truth is that I have always done well as an administrator right from my days in Lobi Stars and that has to do with my dedication, loyalty, hard work and the fear of God. I’m not yet done, as I am still aspiring higher, age is still on my side and the sky will be my starting point.
He said he has no magic but the fact still remain he entered covenant with God and he belongs to the biggest cult in the world which is led by Jesus Christ.
“I’m not a magician! I belong to the biggest cult in the world which is led by Jesus Christ, and it is Christ that has been making it possible for me and the teams I have handled. Some years back we were at the verge of qualifying for the group stage where we will get $150, 000, the Angola team came down here in Markurdi we played 1-1 and even the NFF leader of delegation may his soul rest in peace Col. Yabilsu who was the leader of delegation and everybody abandoned us thinking that all Agosto needed was 0-0 and they will be through.
“At our executive meeting, because our management was to be dissolved then because Senator Akume was then the Governor of the state, he was angry that why could we play a draw at home and I stood up in the executive meeting that where he invited the management of the team and I told him it is not yet over, I am a professional and you don’t give up until the final whistle telling him that what makes him think that Lobi will not qualify, I urged him then to support us to come back victorious and God made it possible for us and we defeated them 1-0 to qualify.
“The secret, also is that I put God first and when God is with you then everything will fall in place, like it was in the Bible ‘Seek him first with all righteousness and everything other thing will be added to you’ there is no magic whatsoever, I seek him first and that is why I would have luck anywhere I go the Governor, the Commissioner or anybody in charge will have that soft spot to listen to my advice and we get the needed result.”