In 2023, she was compared to Rihanna as she turned 30. She wrote: “Like a fine wine, I am not old, I am getting better with age..I am vintage.”
At the just-concluded Wafcon, fans hailed her as Naija Rihenna. She has played in Nigeria, Europe, Asia, North America, and the Middle East.
She is Mlumun Francisca Ordega, a Super Falcons forward and 2018 finalist for the Africa Female Footballer of the Year Award. She has represented Nigeria at all levels of football, winning five Wafcon titles.
From Gboko, Benue State, Ordega was born in 1993 to her parents, Mr. Joseph and Mrs. Christiana.
Before debuting her professional football career with Nigeria Women’s Premier League side Bayelsa Queens in 2008, Ordega began her football career at Invisible Angels FC Gboko, under the tutelage of Apostle Chur, Jr. and Michael Randy Aondona.
She left the Yenegoa outfit and joined Rivers Angels in 2011 before sealing her first move abroad to Russian side Rossiyanka a year later, and continued her career at Swedish club Pitea in 2013.
In 2015, Ordega joined the Washington Spirit, where she had loan moves to Australia’s Sydney and Spain’s Atletico de Madrid Femenino, during her four-year campaign with the US National Women’s Soccer League team.
She left Spirit in 2019 for Chinese Women’s Super League side Shanghai Shengli, inspiring them to a runners-up position.
By 2021, Ordega was at Levante and moved to CSKA Moscow in 2021, where she played until this year when she moved to Al-Ittihad, where she joined her Super Falcons teammate, Ashleigh Plumptre.
She made her debut for the Super Falcons in 2010 and has now featured at four FIFA Women’s World Cup events, making it as a finalist for the Africa Women’s Player of the Year Award in 2018.
The major highlight of her career was in 2015 when she impressed at the Women’s World Cup in Canada, where she inspired Nigeria’s incredible comeback in a 3-3 draw with Sweden in Winnipeg.
When asked why her flamboyant appearance on the field, Ordega said it was to reassure her mother that even as a lady, one can play football and still be oneself. This was to allay her mother’s fears about a daughter playing football, a sport that is dominated by the male gender, with the forward naming female football players that combine career with mothering, switching at intervals to have babies.
In 2022, during the 10th Anniversary of her foundation, Francisca Ordega Foundation, Ordega told her guests that Judith Benson encouraged her to play football.
“I was not born like a hero, but I choose to fight like a man,” she said in an interview, going ahead to add that she was born like a woman but fights like a man. “But that does not mean we are less humans,” she said while smiling.
From sneaking to play football on the streets of Gboko to her professional debut with Bayelsa Queens, the vintage Mlumun Francisca Ordega, five-time Wafcon Champion, and her teammates were conferred with the National Honour of the Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON) by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu after lifting gold at the just-concluded 2024 Wafcon finals in Morocco.
Back at home in Makurdi, the Government of Benue State, under the leadership of Fr. Hyacinth Alia, Executive Governor, gifted her a fifty-million-naira (N50m) Cash prize, a three-bedroom house in the heart of Makurdi, and a street in her name.
Like a fine wine, indeed, the vintage Ordega is getting better with age. Because she has not hung her boots yet, her Amateur coach, Apostle Chur, Jr., Michael Randy Aondona received Ten Million Naira (N10m) as “Thank you” from the Governor for discovering the talent.
In the words of Innocent Idibia a.k.a 2Baba, Special Adviser to the Governor on Entertainment and Community Outreach, we are proud of you, Ordega.
