EMMANUEL ONWUBIKOIn the last couple of days, the French national team footballer of Malian origin who played for Chelsea FC of England and is now earning a six-figure payout per week in the increasingly enticing Saudi Arabia football league, Mr. N’Golo Kante, has been visiting his native Mali.
He used this current international break to visit his native land as he wasn’t called up to the French national team as part of their contingent that tackled Croatia for European Nations Cup qualification match on 20th March which France won by 2-0.
Join our WhatsApp ChannelSo the visit to Mali by N’Golo Kante was extensively captured through photographic and video recordings even as his activities while on vacation in Mali trended everywhere on social media and most of these audio-visual recordings and photographs which went viral on social media platforms like Facebook, show this diminutive but immensely talented midfielder, N’Golo Kante, moving around and about Bamako without any physically armed security details or police just as he was often seen putting on very cheap clothes and he even bought a second-hand motorcycle that he rode around his own side of Bamako in Mali. He mingled very well with his people, especially with the younger people who were busy having photo opportunities with the International footballer of a very humble lifestyle.
As aforementioned, there was also another set of young boys and girls going about their different businesses just as some of these youngsters who share some affinity with this professional footballer were seen interacting seamlessly with N’Golo Kante.
He has reportedly married a Malian girl in a very low profile wedding event and has reportedly invested and splashed over $5 million USD in setting up his family accommodation in Bamako just as he has also embarked on such projects with socio-economic impact for his people like a stadium and a health centre. He was also seen sitting out with his biological mother. N’Golo Kante’s humility completely masked the reality of who truly this guy is in terms of his material net worth. This is a player who has made a lot of achievements professionally up to the very peak of his footballing career which is the senior men’s world cup which he won as a member of the France national team.
The United States-based Forbes.com ran an introductory line on N’Golo Kante, thus: “N’Golo Kante is a two-time English premiership champion (one of those includes being a member of Leicester City’s historical run). Most recently, he won the Senior Men’s World Cup with Team France. He was named French Player of the Year in 2017 and Premier League Player of the Year in 2016.” This recording is old. It doesn’t even tell the whole story of Kante’s milestones as a Chelsea FC player whereby he won the European league. In terms of monetary value, this French player of Malian nativity is considered one of the richest African-born footballers of all time.
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A particular blog known as salarysport.com said about his worth thus: ” N’Golo Kante earns £423,000 British pounds per week, £21, 996, 000 per a year playing for Al-Ittihad club Jeddah Saudi league as a defensive midfielder. His net worth is £134,992,000. He is 33. And was born in France. His current contract expires on June 30th 2025.”
What the above statistics show is that by all estimates, this unassuming and comprehensively humble footballer, by the name N’Golo Kante is a very wealthy person. He made a particularly interesting statement to the media just before he signed for his Saudi team. He said his reason for moving to the Saudi League was basically to make money to build infrastructures for his people back home in Mali. He said his happiness is in seeing that life is made meaningful and healthy for his people. His current visit to Mali has seen him fulfill these ambitious aspirations and his people are happy for him.
But there is one question I have asked myself since I started following N’Golo Kante’s most recent vacation in Mali. I asked myself that were this man a Nigerian from one of the townships or even from Abuja, will he be freely moving about without any form of armed guards and security details? Will N’Golo Kante as a Nigerian be seen cruising on a second hand motorcycle commuting from his Parents’ home to places like the township centre and market?
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The answer to the above interrogatories is self-evident so I wouldn’t bother you with it but I will give some instances to show that the spate of organized crimes of kidnappings, terrorism, banditry, and armed robberies that have become commonplace in most states of Nigeria, may have deeper reasons than we often think. The fact that the crime rate is so high in Nigeria is not because we are the poorest people on earth or because the level of deprivation and lack of social services are enough justification. There is more to it than meets the eye. If poverty is the reason why our Nigerian citizens who are successful can’t move around freely in Nigeria their country like the way N’Golo Kante did in Mali his Country, then I think there could be some metaphysical explanations that ought to be found and proffered.
Just look at Mali in the same West African sub-region but the population in Bamako has not allowed the ghosts of greed, bloodthirsty criminality and gangster lifestyles to overwhelm them. It looks like Malians have not allowed the ghosts of materialism to overwhelm their cultural value of respect for the sanctity and sacredness of life, hospitality and a sense of ‘live and let live’. Most Malians have yet to become excessively materialistic and they are prepared to commit any kind of crime just to make money like a lot of people both young and old believe and behave in Nigeria. This is the fundamental difference.
Let’s look at where Nigeria is in the statistical data of organised crimes worldwide. Business Insider Africa presents the top 10 African countries with the highest crime index at the start of 2025. It stated that the list is courtesy of Numbeo.
In the statistics of infamy, South Africa is Africa’s most crime-affected country, with a crime index score of 74.7, placing it 5th globally.
The report went on to state that crime is a universal issue, reflective of societal disparities and struggles, but its manifestations vary across regions.
The report says that socio-economic disparities are among the leading causes of crime globally, and Africa is no exception. Poverty, unemployment, and lack of access to education create conditions where individuals resort to illegal activities for survival.
In urban centres, particularly in informal settlements, these challenges are acute. Many African cities are grappling with rapid urbanization, leaving governments struggling to provide adequate housing, sanitation, and security services. I think these excuses formulated by the reporter of Business Insider Africa are not sufficient explanations for why sophisticated crimes have become just too common in Nigeria so much so that brothers and friends can sell out their own brothers to kidnappers just for pecuniary gain.
Anyway, Nigeria ranked 11th globally and second to South Africa in Africa with a crime index score of 66.6, confronts widespread security issues, including organised crime, armed robberies, and kidnappings. Angola follows closely, ranked 13th globally with a score of 66.3, where both violent and property crimes remain prevalent, particularly in urban areas.
After a careful perusal of the aforementioned statistical data of the heightened insecurity in Nigeria, one is left to imagine that were N’Golo Kante a Nigerian professional footballer visiting his hometown in Nigeria, he dared not try moving about and around his native land without armed security.
He will risk being kidnapped and if the practitioners of crimes have no access to him, they will go for his parents like they did twice to N’Golo Kante’s then-Chelsea FC mate Mikel Obi whose father was kidnapped twice whilst he was representing Nigeria at the World cup football championship.
John Mikel Obi said to BBC: “I thought I would find out kidnappers had shot my father.” This was reported on March 22nd, 2019.
John Mikel Obi says he played in a World Cup match in 2018 for Nigeria not knowing if he would come off the field to find out his father had been shot.
The midfielder was told before facing Argentina that his father had been kidnapped for a second time.
Mikel, 31, reportedly paid 10m naira (about £21,000) for his release.
“I thought I was going to lose my dad, I thought he was going to be shot because of the demands and stuff,” he told BBC World Service’s Sportsworld.
“They said they would shoot him and in the back of my head during the game, I thought that after the match I would probably find out they had decided to shoot him.
“It’s life. It’s made me stronger as a person. I can look at so many things and say ‘This is not going to shake me because I’ve been through worse’. I just hope that it never happens again and my dad can enjoy the rest of his life in peace.”
Mikel, then again, playing for Championship club Middlesbrough, found out while he was on his way to the St Petersburg Stadium for the World Cup group game in June that his father and his driver had been kidnapped at gunpoint in Nigeria.
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The former Chelsea man said that he chose not to tell anyone what was happening as he wanted the players to focus on the game. The cruel experiences of Mikel Obi whose father was kidnapped two times and he had to pay ransom to get the bandits who seized his Dad to free him, is the commonplace occurrences in Nigeria of our contemporary time. The reason basically is that sophisticated crimes are massive business franchises worth several billions of dollars and some top-ranking military and security forces are suspected to belong to these networks. This is why the cases of insecurity and kidnappings especially have continued to escalate.
Also, the government at every level has little regard for accountability and so those who should prevent large-scale crimes from happening are never administratively censured even if all of one state comes under massive attacks by terrorists as it happened once in Abuja.
It is therefore a thing of considerable pain, anger, and disappointment that these things are happening to us in Nigeria even when we say we have a government. This is even more disheartening if we observe that within these few days since N’Golo Kante visited Mali, Nigeria has recorded over two dozen occurrences of sophisticated organised crimes of kidnappings, assassination and banditry in many parts of the Country.
In Kogi State, a commercial bus passing from the South-east to Abuja with 18 passengers was hijacked by bandits, and all the passengers, and the driver were kidnapped and taken away into the forests. In Benue State, two soldiers and a policeman were killed by bandits. Scores of farmers were also beheaded.
In Anambra, Enugu states, many commuters were kidnapped by suspected armed herders thought to be Fulani.
In Katsina State, the former DG of NYSC Brigadier General Tsiga has been kept in the forests by his kidnappers for over three weeks today.
In Plateau state, bandits have continued to ransack and kill villagers even as a prominent leader of one of the ethnic groups Fulani was assassinated by yet-to-be-determined bandits.
It’s a free-for-all all sophisticated crimes in Nigeria now. To make matters worse, president Tinubu is engrossed in the politics of seeking re-election in the year 2027 to give any attention to the expanding frontiers of sophisticated crimes. The Nigerian National Assembly is populated by dimwitted nitwits and jesters who are mostly in politics for pecuniary benefits and cannot muster the courage to challenge the president who is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed forces of Nigeria, to protect the citizens and Nigeria’s critical infrastructures which is his fundamental constitutional duty as the president.
With these terrible statistics of crimes, it is safe to say that was N’Golo Kante a Nigerian, wouldn’t dare come around without arranging for battalions of armed security details to follow his every step even to his local praying centre. The heads of security agencies make a kill by charging these rich clients who approach them to hire armed security guards for their local movements within Nigeria.
Emmanuel Onwubiko is the founder of the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria and was a National Commissioner of the National Human Rights Commission of Nigeria
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