In the teeming Lagos slum of Ajegunle, home to a “Dustbin Estate” built on a swamp and bisected by a sewer, there tend to be only two means of escape. Either you find your niche in music, drawing inspiration from the ghetto’s vibrant tribal mix, or you try out as a footballer. There are abundant reasons why AJ City, as it is dubbed by locals, is today recognised as a cradle of the finest talent in the Nigerian game. When, in 1985, the country’s under-16s became the first African team to win a World Cup, five players hailed from this district. So did Emmanuel Amunike, once a winger for Barcelona under Louis van Gaal. And so, too, does Odion Ighalo, who tonight is expected to complete the road less travelled by making his debut for Manchester United. They had almost forgotten about Ighalo in Ajegunle. He had already announced his retirement from international football, bowing out as top scorer in last year’s Africa Cup of Nations, while a club career that had most recently taken him to Changshun and Shanghai signalled a gentle slide towards the margins. That was until United, more out of desperation for a striker than planning, called his agents to secure a last-gasp emergency loan deal. Plucked from exotic obscurity at the age of 30, Ighalo today finds his face plastered all over the streets of his home city. Oluwashina Okeleji has known Ighalo since he was 16, when he was still toiling for local Nigerian sides and chasing the all-important move to Europe. He is as astonished by the latest turn of events as anybody. “This is quite a remarkable story,” says Okeleji, who was also brought up in Ajegunle and is now an expert on African football. “Everyone thought, when he left for China, he was done and dusted. But if you go around Lagos, lots of signs are being put up for viewing centres for United’s game against Chelsea. The selling point is Ighalo’s debut. People want to see this.” Outside Nigeria, the reflex reaction to Ighalo’s hasty arrival at Old Trafford has been to depict it as a panic buy, a damning reflection of United’s diminished market power. The two weeks that he had to spend training away from the main squad, due to coronavirus precautions enforced after his journey from Shanghai, have sharpened the image of a player on the outside looking in. It is, in every sense, a myopic perspective. For all its intractable complexities, Nigeria is a land of 206 million people and potentially the Premier League’s greatest untapped market. Up to 80 million are estimated to be regular followers of its matches, most congregating in vast viewing spaces to replicate the stadium feel. For a club as commercially acquisitive as United, Ighalo’s addition could be seen not so much as an act of last resort but as a priceless opportunity. Since the Premier League’s inception in 1992, players from 40 countries have represented United, but none from the world’s seventh most-populous nation. The club claimed in 2006 to have signed papers with John Obi Mikel, before the midfielder controversially announced he was joining Chelsea. Capturing Ighalo, albeit in the autumn of his career, corrects a conspicuous missing link. “Every year there are about 100 Nigerian kids dreaming of playing in the Premier League, but they all know that there’s no direct access,” Okeleji explains. “So, they do everything to be snaffled by a club in Europe, and then use it as a springboard to England. Aiyegbeni Yakubu and Celestine Babayaro both succeeded, but no one has left a huge mark since Nwankwo Kanu. All those who supported Arsenal because of Kanu have changed to being United fans overnight. With Ighalo going to United, there are others who will be motivated and inspired by his journey.” Last November, Ighalo, a profoundly devout man, made the mistake of tweeting a picture of himself on an ostentatious armchair, with the caption: “Favour over labour.” Many Nigerians excoriated him for the remark, taking this impression of entitlement as a sign of indolence, arguing that if he had never laboured, then favour could never find him. Ighalo, though, has had the last word in spectacular style, profiting from the type of coup not even divine providence could have conjured. Through life, Ighalo has been anything but egocentric. “When I first saw him as a teenager, I could tell that he had a chance,” Okeleji explains. “Where we grew up, if you take the wrong path you could end up doing drugs, attacking people, selling fake Armani bags in the middle of the road. But he came from a strong family, with older brothers to protect him from these dangers. He and his twin sister were the last born, and he left the ghetto very early. “He had trials in Portugal and eventually ended up at Lyn Oslo. The moment he arrived in Norway, he told his mum he was cold. Still, his attitude was that he couldn’t go home empty-handed, that he couldn’t go back to the life he was living before he left for Europe.” The Norwegian connection proved another propitious circumstance in steering him towards United. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer remembered him from his two seasons in Oslo, while Ighalo’s agents had also dealt with the manager’s long-standing representative, Jim Solbakken. For all that Ighalo has scarcely concealed his euphoria at securing such a move, his off-field activities suggest an unbreakable attachment to his native land. At Udinese, he spoke of his resolve to build a place in Nigeria in which the destitute still had a chance to thrive, and he has made good on that promise by creating an orphanage in his name in Lagos. The project, on which he has spent £1 million so far, can accommodate up to 40 children, taking orphaned babies and pledging to look after them until they turn 18. When Ighalo, who, despite his fortune has no permanent base outside Lagos, turned up last Christmas to inspect the premises, he was venerated, followed through the front door by a brass band. The happiness of his improbable United switch is tempered, however, by the loss of his sister Mary, who died in December aged just 43 after collapsing at her home. It is her name that will be stitched on his red boots against Chelsea tonight, alongside the Nigerian flag. For it is not merely one man’s destiny at stake in this tale, but the fate of a crazed football nation that at last has a United idol to call its own.