Nigerian Football Federation needs a breath of fresh air

Sports, especially football, is one phenomenon in which discourse, almost every Nigerian between the ages of at least 18 to 70 years, does not avoid getting stuck. This is not because of anything; it is just a reflection of how passionate Nigerians are, as a people, about the round-leather game. If you give Nigerians football, they forget about their political and ethnoreligious differences. With football, nobody in Nigeria remembers inflation, unemployment, or forex scarcity again. When it is time for football, very few people have time to bother themselves with NBS (National Bureau of Statistics) econometrics that offers no hope of any immediate socioeconomic respite from the current situation in the country. When Karl Marx described religion as the “opium of the masses”, hardly did he realise that sports, football, in particular, would later come to compete with the former, in terms of efficacy, when it comes to numbing socio-psychological pains.

Apart from the euphoric entertainment, lovers of sports and those who are deeply involved in it are reaping bountifully in terms of returns on investment because of the volume of money in the business ecosystem. They are daily smiling to the bank. But this comes with putting in place, a solid structure, run by seasoned administrators with requisite professional knowledge, who have at heart, the love of country, and above all, the love for humanity. It is a long-term, and capital-intensive project that is better run by visionaries. It should be an exclusive preserve of only those who can see into the distant future, and not those who cannot see beyond their noses should be running it. Those who cannot see beyond the immediate pecuniary gains have no business being around sports administration. But unfortunately, those at the helm of affairs in the different sports governing bodies in Nigeria, fall into the unfortunate category of “what-is-in-it-for-me-?”, but football is the one, most people are more concerned about.

Football is, unarguably, the most popular sport in Nigeria, hence, what happens to it, attracts the attention of a majority of Nigerians, who fall within the age category identified above. The sports governing body in the country, the Nigerian Football Federation, an affiliate of FIFA (Federation of International Football Associations), through CAF (the Confederation of African Football), is saddled with the responsibility of organising, running, and developing the game of football in the country. Before now, it used to be known as “the Nigerian Football Association”, NFA, before some self-serving individuals decided to change the nomenclature to NFF, as opposed to the former, recognised by Nigerian law. One of the body’s former Secretaries-General, Fanny Amun, once said to me in an exclusive interview that, some individuals who were obsessed with being addressed as “The President”, instead of “The Chairman”, were the brains behind the changing of the name.

But assuming the people in charge have been able to deliver on their mandates, nobody will be bothered by whatever nomenclature, by which the governing body goes. For the records, the last time Nigerian football fans really smiled was when late Coach Stephen Keshi, in 2013, led some set of glory-thirsty, an unknown quantity of  players to winning the African Cup of Nation in South Africa. That was over a year before the outgoing chairman came on board. It would be very unfair, to blame the monumental failure Nigerian football has suffered on the Amaju Pinnick-led excos though, they contributed in no small way. The (cumulative) failure predates their coming on board, but to whom much is given, much is expected. A lot of soccer-loving Nigerians, including yours sincerely, were in solidarity with the former Delta State Football Association chairman, while the distraction brought about by Chris Giwa’s protracted litigation, challenging Pinnick’s 2014 victory lasted. Having laid that to rest, however, Nigerians expected the Amaju-led board to hit the ground running. It was, disappointingly, the same old story.

The league, being run by an illegal body, the League Management Company Limited (LMC) instead of the Club Owners Association of Nigeria as it is done in saner climes, had been on, for years now, without sponsorship. What that means is that the financial benefits that would have accrued to the clubs participating in the league are being lost to the ineptitude and the intellectual aridity that have characterised the administration of the game in the country. Funny enough, the direct victims of the fraudulent arrangement that brought about the emergence of the LMC, the Club Owners’ Association, are in bed with the interlopers (their oppressors). They appear okay with being denied what is rightly theirs.

A report by a renowned international sports journalist, Oluwashina Okeleji, details all the “hit-and-miss” attempts by the deadly combination of ineptitude, and illegality that the LMC encapsulates, by failing to put the league on the right commercial footing.

These failed attempts by the LMC were, in addition, shrouded in lack of transparency and accountability, and it still continues up until today, under the current chairman, Shehu Dikko, who happens to be one of the major contenders for the forthcoming NFF Presidency.

The pioneer Chairman of the Nigeria Premier League, late Chief Oyuki Jackson Obaseki, following its inauguration in February 2005, put on the table, his vision for the Nigerian league, it was a demonstration of a clear-cut idea, that was a product of rigorous intellectual endeavour, rooted in patriotism, to take the league to a new height. But the LMC arrangement, led by its pioneer chairman, Honourable Nduka Irabor, put paid to the whole thing, as the company that has outlived its usefulness, if any, continues to constitute a clog, rather than a cog in the wheel of progress. They’ve been running the league now without sponsorship and Nigerians seem to have been hypnotised into accepting it from the NFF, as being normal. They have never started the league in a particular season, without postponing the date times without number. Furthermore, they also, are unable to return the NPFL to the screens of Nigerians as they failed to secure and maintain a TV deal. They even came, last year, with what in local parlance referred to as “Sakamanje” (deceit) of a live mobile TV app (NPFL TV), which turned out to be no more than a hoax.

If you, still, are not convinced that the Amaju administration represents “failure on steroid”, the Aiteo (FA, or Challenge) Cup, is in such state of a mess that, the winners of last year’s edition, Bayelsa United and Bayelsa Queens Football Clubs are still being owed the prize money, hence, the NFF’s inability to retrieve the trophy (symbol of winning the competition), for ceremonial display for this year’s edition’s grand finale. How much are we talking about here? ₦25 million. It is not as if Aiteo has not met its financial obligations to the federation. To make the matter worse, all the Nigerian Professional Football League sides boycotted the competition due to a lack of motivation as the competition would not be concluded on time for the winner to be registered for the CAF Confederation’s Cup. That is why Kwara United Football Club which finished 4th in the league was handed the ticket to, along with Remo Stars, represent Nigeria in next season’s edition of the competition.

My findings reveal that the grand finale of this year’s edition is yet to have a date because Kano Pillars who had earlier withdrawn from a semi-final fixture against Kogi United Football Club of Lokoja and was walked over, accordingly, thus handing the Kogi state government-sponsored side, the ticket to play Heartland of Owerri in the final, now want the fixture rescheduled so that they can give it a shot; this would give the Kano side a chance of playing in the WAFU Cup, following their relegation to the NNL. Who does that? But this is Nigeria! This is Amaju’s NFF. Our domestic football scene has become a theatre of “anything can happen”. There is no prize for reminding anyone that, Nigerian clubs are no longer forces to reckon with in CAF elite club competition. They get eliminated as early as the first or 2nd preliminary round of the competition. It looks like an aeon since Enyimba last won the CAF Champions League back-to-back – 2003/04 and 2004/05 seasons. Little wonder in the newly launched CAF’s money-spinning “Super League”, Nigeria is not one of those countries with two representatives as only Enyimba was considered good enough to be among the pioneer teams that will compete in the maiden edition of the league.

What about national football teams? Apart from the perennial winners of the Women African Cup of Nations, the Super Falcons, and the Golden Eaglets who won the FIFA 2015, Under-17 World Cup, in Chile; the men’s senior national team, the Super Eagles, only managed a third-place finish in Egypt 2019 AFCON under Amaju. The rest is a tale of failures. The team’s participation in Russia 2018 World Cup was a “better-forgotten” experience. As if that were not enough, the three-time African champions could not manage to see Ghana off, in a two-legged qualifying fixture for the Qatar 2022 World Cup. Nigeria lost to the “away goal” rule, in that “Jollof derby” that ended 1-1 on aggregate.

So these are some of the horrible legacies of Amaju Pinnick as the NFF president. Yet, he was adding insult to our injury, by mustering the temerity to attempt assaulting our collective sensibilities, saying that, “some well-meaning football stakeholders” in the country were pressuring, and pleading with him to run for a third term, even in the face of his monumental eight-year failure. That is being superlatively clownish!

As I was about to conclude this piece this morning, pictures surfaced on social media, of how the Super Falconets who just got eliminated by their Netherlands Under-20 counterparts from the ongoing Costa Rica 2022 FIFA Under-20 World Cup, are being subjected to unparalleled inhuman treatments, in transit. I got this from the Facebook page of an ace sports journalist, Collins Udoh: “Nigeria’s #Falconets have been travelling from Costa Rica since 6:30am on Monday. They’re now in Istanbul on a 24-hour layover and sleeping on the airport chairs and floor, or wherever they can find. With no transit visa, they can’t leave the airport to get a hotel @fifaworldcup @fifawomensworldcup”.

Things like this have been emblematic of NFF for the past eight years, with nobody asking any serious questions.

One of the few positives of Amaju’s rein is the NPFL/LaLiga Promise Under-15 football competition among academies of Nigerian professional football clubs. It has produced some notable stars who have featured for the national age-grade teams. They include two players from the academy of ABS Ilorin FC. That is talking about, Olusegun Olakunle, who played for the Golden Eaglets at the Brazil 2019 Under-17 FIFA World Cup, now playing with Krasnodar of Russia, and Mubaraq Gattah, also featured for the same set of Eaglets, and now playing in the Greek league. Apart from that, I can’t remember any notable developmental project embarked upon by the NFF under Amaju, and his co-travellers.

With the degree of interest Nigerians have shown in who becomes the next president of the football-governing body in the country, I am glad to observe that the era when people measure the game’s progress in the country by how fat their personal bank account balances are, appears gone, for good. Nigerian football needs a breath of fresh air, a new idea, a shift in paradigm, and a change in narratives. But how do we achieve that? Nigeria cannot afford to have, in charge, anyone who has been a part of the current cabal. Any member of the cabal that has held football development by its jugular for over a decade now must not be allowed to come within a 100km of football administration. We cannot have this set of people in place (on the board of the federation) and expect anything different from what we have witnessed in the last eight years. But, the only way the problem could be solved remains to overturn the
“structural fraud” that saw to it that, the state FAs, and that of the federal capital territory, now have 37 votes, instead of one as a single body, and a vote at the NFF Congress. This has, over the years, unnecessarily empowered them to keep recycling mediocrity, playing Russia roulette with the emotions of over 200 million soccer-loving Nigerians, and in the process enriching their individual pockets at the expense of the development of the round-leather game in the country.

The legendary Mathematical Segun Odegbami, in his weekly column in “The Complete Sports”, published on Saturday the 6th of August 2022, wrote about the ignoble role played by the Ministry of Youths and Sports Development, through its undue interference in creating the monster that the state FA chairmen, who now constitute 37 out of the total 44 eligible electorates who will vote at the congress. Odegbami detailed it thus: “The Federal Ministry of Sports that has been the puppeteer behind the scenes determining the fate of all past regimes, and directing how things fared, may be powerless to right the wrong they introduced some two decades ago, when (without realising the grave damage they were introducing at the time) they increased the size of the electorate in order to install a preferred candidate, by adding all 37 chairmen of state associations (and even their secretaries, at a time) into the Elective Congress and created a ‘monster’ they have not been able to kill since then”.

Whenever the national team participates in any of the CAF, or FIFA-organized competitions, it is always a tale of national embarrassment. If the team does not arrive late or is improperly kitted, there would be cases of unpaid camp allowances or match bonuses. Little wonder, we’ve not been able to get the best out of our players, talented as most of them are, playing for some of the best clubs in Europe.

How do we overcome this problem? How do we flush out these charlatans who have imposed themselves on us? The irony of it is that they, the beneficiaries of the rot, are the only ones who can initiate the change process that will lead to a complete overhaul of the system and clean the Augean stable. But remember, no one, especially he who derives some emolument from it, gives up power willingly. Nigerian football is currently at the mercy of these charlatans who are bereft of ideas on how to move the game forward so that Nigeria can join the rest of the world in the 21st century. They have blocked all the avenues through which genuine stakeholders, like ex-footballers who’d played the game at the highest level, and understand where the shoe pinches, can come in and make the much-desired difference. The cliché that they always bandy around is that; “being an ex-football player does not make you a good administrator”. Yes, that is true. But they also fail to add, or understand that, being connected to the “powers-that-be” in Aso Rock, and an ability to buy, and wear, replica Jerseys of European clubs, and even that of the national team on a potbelly, does not make one a good football administrator either.

Look around the great footballing nations, and tell me, which of their administrators has not played the game up to a certain professional level. In Europe, it is a mix of retired players, and people who have been successful in their respective businesses, which stand them in better stead to explore and maximise the commercial potential of the game. It is only in Nigeria that you’d see people who do not have what it takes to manage a “sachet water” retail business jostle for a job like the headship of the Nigerian Football Federation which requires high-level marketing skills, a sound knowledge of how the game is being run in a commercially viable way without jettisoning the interest of the fans which is entertainment through winning trophies. All they have is the political connection, and nothing more.

But as it stands right now, the avenue through which the likes of Segun Odegbami, Austin Jay Jay Okocha, Kanu Nwankwo, Tijani Babangida, Daniel Amokachi, Garba Lawal, Peter Rufai etc., could come in and contribute their quotas, bringing to bear, their experiences, garnered from playing the game at the highest level, had been blocked. Kanu made an attempt, by setting up a club, called Papilo FC, to compete in the NNL, hoping to rise through the promotion lather to the NPFL. But, in less than one season, he had to sell off, as he could not adapt to the cesspool of corruption that the league represents. Another very recent experience is “Vandrezza FC”, which came in as a private concern with a view to being a reference point on how a professional football club should be run, without government ownership or sponsorship. The result of the experiment is not one that can attract new investors (private ownership of clubs).

Among the ex-footballers in the running for the NFF’s top job are Idah Peterside, Benedict Akwuegbu, and Jonathan Akpoborire, who has played for the Super Eagles, in addition to having played in South Africa, Austria and Germany, respectively. The time has come for Nigerians to get rid of the asphyxiating presence of these mediocre on the board of the NFF, so that, the game can move forward. That breath of fresh air must not be long in coming, so as to save the game from the cancerous presence of those who have nothing to contribute to the development of the game.

Just take a look at the way Samuel Eto’o Fils has revolutionised Cameroonian football. Even though they hosted and lost the last African Cup of Nations, they have managed to qualify for the 2022 World Cup, after being on the brink of non-qualification, when they lost, 0-1 at home to the Dessert Foxes of Algeria in the first leg. They would later go to Algiers, and won 2-1, away, and booked a place in Qatar (2022 World Cup, come November). Now Eto’o has said, the federation would send scouts to monitor their World Cup opponents, Brazil next month, as they take on Ghana in a friendly match ahead of the World Cup.

It takes someone who’d played the game at the highest level to know, and do, this. That is one of the numerous advantages of having an ex-player in charge. It may never happen in Nigeria, under an Amaju.

The surest way of discarding this “confederacy of mediocrity” that is entrenched right from the level of state FAs is for various state governments to hand off ownership of professional football clubs, as that has been the breeding ground for the institutionalised mediocrity that irrigates corruption on a large scale. With the way things are being run at the moment, one can’t vie for the FA chairmanship, except he is among the top management of a football establishment like an NPFL side, most of which are owned by state governments. These owners, then, use the chairmanship of these clubs (a ticket for contesting) to settle political IOU, the altar at which merit-based development is sacrificed for mediocrity.

If the government doesn’t divest, they should at least appoint any of the ex-footballers from their respective states, who have armed themselves with the requisite training and certificates in sports management so that these clubs would be run professionally, and in a profit-oriented manner that would move the game forward in the country. Enough should be enough.

Abubakar writes from Ilorin. He can be reached via 08051388285 or [email protected]