Kabir Abubakar makes a quick run, reaching the ball just before the onrushing goalkeeper and slotting it into the net. The crowd at the Kano Race Course field erupts in jubilation and his teammates rally around him.
On the soccer pitch sideline, his coach, Hidaa Ahmad Ghaddar, is cheering too.
Not long ago, both Kabir and Ms. Ghaddar were chasing different kinds of goals. At age 15, Kabir found himself entangled with a youth gang, hurtling toward a life of violence and drugs.
Why We Wrote This
For boys caught up in gang violence in the Nigerian city of Kano, a female soccer coach has become an unlikely savior.
For her part, Ms. Ghaddar was pursuing a career as a professional soccer player, kitting up for tournaments across Nigeria and Europe.
But two years ago, after injuries derailed her ambitions, Ms. Ghaddar returned to Kano, the northern Nigerian city where she grew up. Troubled by the number of boys like Kabir she encountered there, she decided to start a soccer team.
Her hope was that soccer could do for these boys what it had done for her. “I want to teach them how to live life with purpose,” she says.
Not afraid to stand out
On the dusty soccer fields at Kano’s historic horse-racing track, Ms. Ghaddar cuts an unusual profile.
In this conservative Muslim city, it is uncommon to see a woman on the pitch – let alone coaching. But Ms. Ghaddar has never been afraid of standing out.
Born to Lebanese parents, she grew up here playing pickup soccer with her brothers and their friends.
“Being an introvert, playing football gave me the avenue to express myself,” she says.
Then, at age 16, Ms. Ghaddar moved to Lebanon to attend university, where she played with other girls for the first time.
“I did not know … that women’s teams existed,” she recalls.
While studying physical education at the Antonine University in Baabda, Lebanon, Ms. Ghaddar was also selected for the Lebanese women’s futsal team – a five-a-side variation of soccer. As part of that squad, she competed in international tournaments, such as the World InterUniversities Championships in Spain and the World University Championships in Portugal.
After she graduated, Ms. Ghaddar played for teams in Lebanon, Nigeria, and England. She was repeatedly sidelined by knee injuries, though, so she quit playing competitively and began coaching at a youth soccer club in Lebanon.
Breaking the cycle
But Ms. Ghaddar found herself troubled by a social problem facing her hometown. Boys as young as age 9 were being recruited into gangs, which roamed Kano carrying sticks, knives, and clubs, which they used to mug people. Drug abuse was rampant.
Such gangs, known locally as “Yan Daba,” are often backed by political parties, who use them to rough up supporters of opposing parties. For boys swept into gangs, it can be the beginning of a lifetime of cycling in and out of overcrowded, dangerous prisons.
“We must decide if we want to keep warehousing young people in deplorable conditions that harden them and support their return to crime,” says Bukunmi Akanbi, a researcher focused on conflict and human rights at the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID) in Abuja.
Ms. Ghaddar saw another way. In 2023, she decided to move back to Kano and set up a community football academy where young boys could both train as soccer players and learn skills that would help them stay away from the gangs permanently.
Today, Breakthrough Academy has around 25 players between the ages of 8 and 17, who come from neighborhoods across Kano. Three times a week, they meet at Kano’s racecourse, running drills on a field beside the racetrack.
One recent afternoon, she stands at the center of the field, her black hijab neatly tucked under her jersey and a whistle around her neck. She paces slowly, watching the players’ moves and giving instructions.
“Pass the ball; keep your head up and play,” she shouts in Hausa, which is most of her players’ first language.
After training, Ms. Ghaddar sits the boys in a circle under a nearby neem tree. As they gulp water, she tells them that “this game will teach you about life. You will win some days and lose some other days, but you must always show up.”
For many players, Ms. Ghaddar is more than just a coach. She is a mentor, a “soccer sister,” and to some boys, a mother figure. Off the field, she organizes classes to help them improve their English and math skills, and sometimes she even takes them on camping trips.
“She has helped all of us here to become better boys,” says Ahmed Al-Mustapha, who joined the academy nine months ago. “She advises us about life and encourages us to go to school. If I hadn’t gotten into this academy, I don’t know what I would have been doing by now.”
Kabir, who says joining the Breakthrough Academy helped him leave a gang, agrees. His teammates fondly call him “Vinícius,” after the Brazilian superstar Vinícius Júnior.
“I hope that soon I will get the opportunity to play abroad like my coach and get signed to a big club,” Kabir says with a shy smile. “It will happen someday.”
Enoch Stephen contributed reporting for this article.
