Refereeing in Nigeria’s top flight and the VAR factor

The 2023/24 Nigeria Premier Football League (NPFL) is in the 26th week with 250 matches having been played as of Week 25. Unprecedented crowd attendance in the ongoing season has also been recorded at match venues with confidence in the system gradually but steadily returning among fans across the country. For the first time in a few years also, players have felt much more comfortable plying their trade at home; sanity having largely returned to the league in terms of administration and especially officiating.

However, not a lot of fans have been particularly pleased with officiating sometimes as it concerns their clubs. But, as it is, the situation has arisen largely due to fans’ impatience, penchant to win at all costs, especially at home games and general lack of knowledge of the rules more than the incompetence of the referees.

The league administrators would readily concede that the referees are not perfect. Yet, they would also readily contend that the current season has witnessed some improvement in officiating, apparently as a result of more games being screened on TV and Over-The-Top (OTT) broadcast delivery. Nonetheless, a few clear errors have still been committed by the match officials; the highlight being the Week 24 Enyimba versus Doma United game in Aba. Even then, the downside in officiating pales into insignificance as only in about 15 matches have issues been raised on the referees’ performance this season. Fifteen out of 250 games give the referees a good score card, rather than being called out outright as biased or induced.

As an administrator, the NPFL neither holds briefs for the Nigeria Referees Association (NRA) nor for individual referees. But the league body is alive to the reality that technology is advancing at a fast rate to eliminate human errors in officiating. It is essentially for the foregoing that NPFL is working in tandem with the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) to tag along with the rest of the world to ensure that the technology to aid refereeing is well grounded in Nigeria soon.

In the meantime, the referees’ body has ensured that no erring match official has escaped from being made to face sanctions for verified inefficiency. Unruly clubs and fans have also not been spared. For instance, in the sequel to the Week 24 game between Enyimba FC and Doma United in Aba on March 10, the home club was slammed with a N7 million fine for offences ranging from failing to provide adequate security for the visiting club and its players and officials, encroachment unto the pitch by unauthorised persons and disruption of live match broadcast, despite leading Doma United 1-0 at the time of the incident. The visitors also got a N2 million fine as a result of failure to restrain the players and officials from being unruly. But Enyimba would suffer more sanctions as the club would play three consecutive home games without fans in the stands.

Deputy Chairman of the Plateau State Football Association, Ezra Godit, while evaluating the referees’ performance this season says the arbiters deserve kudos and more encouragement in the discharge of their duties. According to Godit, the complaints that have been received so far this season owe more to technical than officiating issues, a development he attributes to unprecedented adequate remuneration for the referees.

Interestingly despite the best efforts expended at sanitising match officiating at home and the results that they have yielded in the past couple of years, Nigerian referees continue to be blacked out of action on the continent.

Head of Refereeing at the Confederation of African Football (CAF), Noumandiez Doue, recently asserted that “Nigerian referees are good but need to do more” amid the disturbing reality that no Nigerian referee has been selected among the officials for the Africa Cup of Nations for nearly two decades. Thankfully, Doue also said: “Nigerian referees are improving but they need to do more to be among the best because the selection has started in the last two years”

Perhaps, as a way forward, the NFF should expedite action on the establishment of the Video Assistance Referee (VAR) for the 2024/25 season to aid the match officials’ job effectively.

President of the NRA, Sani Zubair, recently disclosed ongoing plans by the association to deploy the use of VAR for the Nigerian top flight, saying “it will further enhance the performance of the referees, even now that most of the matches in the league will be streamed with newly procured AI cameras.” The retired FIFA-badged referee stated further: “On our own, we will ensure the adequate training of our referees to meet up with the best global practices.”

The foregoing clearly suggests that a turnaround of fortune is around the corner for the Nigerian referees.