NPFL: A promising rise from the ashes

It was looking like another gloomy year as the Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) 2022/23 season approached. For several years before, the country’s league champions had played for virtually nothing with neither trophies nor prize money to take home, safe for the champions whose sponsors had a deep pocket from which to draw funds to compensate the winning teams. It was just as well that the governments had come in handy in raining the rewards, no matter the differentials in figures.

It was not like there was no league management in place to ensure that the players and teams got their rewards. But a combination of subdued resolve and incredible inclination to pursue open-ended sponsorship deals had ensured that the pursuit for genuine progress amounted to mere huffing and puffing that led nowhere. To worsen the situation, the league increasingly disappeared from the publicity radar, no thanks to it not being beamed on TV as it should in an age where coverage should not be compromised for anything.

It was no surprise, therefore, that a huge dose of pessimism from football fans had greeted the coming of a new Interim Management Committee of the league last year as announced by the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), to be headed by former director-general of the National Sports Commission and House of Representatives member, Hon. Gbenga Elegbeleye. The IMC hit the ground running immediately. But it aimed more to restore confidence in the system than anything else. The pool of talents in the league, ever waiting to be exposed but had been largely ignored, would come up for consideration after, onward some of them being considered for the Super Eagles as a matter of policy that entrenches genuine competition for spots.

Not many had thought that the restored league would be sustained until June this year when a closing season heralded the Super 6 competition from which Enyimba FC of Aba emerged champion. It was not the N100 million prize money for the Aba side that attracted the most interest, however. Rather, it was the crowd that graced the nine-day event; an unprecedented occurrence in recent years.

Yet, more was to come. An impressed NFF, which supervises the league body, had by July upgraded the IMC to a full-fledged NPFL – signifying more challenges to be tackled. Elegbeleye had since his assumption of office as the IMC head harped on the need to improve on the welfare of referees which had in the past years been a subject of embarrassing controversy. He did not mince his words at any given opportunity: “We want a system that will work. There were lots of problems with officiating in the past. So, we would fix the problems by providing remuneration a day before the match day and providing accommodation for referees.”

Upon making adequate provision for the referees, the NPFL has also not ceased to closely monitor their activities in its determined resolve to give the league a new lease of life. Not leaving anything to chance still, the NFPL’s Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Davidson Owumi, served a stern warning to managements of clubs: “It has become necessary to remind chairmen, general managers and other top officials of the clubs that no club officer is permitted to visit or talk to match officials in their changing rooms at halftime or at any time in the course of a league match. Access to match officials is restricted and only appointed match commissioners and referees are to be in the designated rooms at halftime.” Sequel to the recent preliminary suspension meted to 14 erring referees in the NPFL by the NFF’s Referees Committee, the Nigeria Referees Association (NRA) has also weighed in by offering support to sanitise the system. Its President, Sani Zubair, said: “We don’t care who the godfather is, once the fact has been established that a referee has erred deliberately, such a person will face the full wrath of the law guiding principles of officiating. We will do what we can to ensure that we flush out bad referees and make players have 100 percent confidence in officiating.”

Owumi had earlier announced an improvement in prize money for the winner of the ongoing season. The champion will get N150 million, a 50 percent increase from the previous season’s prize money. The NPFL board, according to the NPFL’s COO, has already administered a take-off grant of N10 million to each of the 20 teams participating.

The coming of GTI Asset Management & Trust Limited as the sponsor of the league this year has appeared to change the course of history and by implication brought upon the league a revolution that had been long awaited. Having sealed a ten-year deal with the NPFL worth N10 billion, the GTI looked up to better days ahead, with the deal covering title sponsorship, broadcast rights, match officials’ indemnities, infrastructure development and properties, as well as ensuring that the 20 premier league clubs become independent of government sponsorship.

As a strategic partner of the NPFL, the GTI has since called on individuals, philanthropists and corporate Nigeria to take advantage of the ongoing revolution that elite club football is undergoing in the country to invest in the league clubs; a call that has already been hearkened by MTN which agreed a deal that would cover eight live games each weekend, translating to over 300 games per season.

The icing on the cake for Nigeria League football appears the signing of a N1.6 billion five-year deal between satellite TV outfit StarTimes and the NPFL on November 2, 2023, in Abuja. According to the agreement, StarTimes will broadcast two league matches weekly from November 18, with the number of games rising to four from February 18, 2024, to 2026.

Good news: organisation of the 2023/24 season has been superb so far, although there is still room for improvement based on the league body working effectively on reports from match venues and effecting decisions accordingly and where necessary. The season, though in Week 11, has had highlights already – the best, without doubt, of which is the 5-2 win garnered by Pillars FC of Kano on December 3 away at the Patami Stadium, Gombe against the home side Gombe United FC, with forward Yusuf Abdullahi scoring all the five goals for the visitors. With 27 games to the end of the season, more such results in Gombe would be recorded to show that any club can earn points at any venue.