Nigerian Government Ban on National Football Team, disband of NFF,FIFA and the real i
The Nigerian Government suspended the Super Eagles, late June 2010 from all International Games for two years primarily due to the Super Eagles poor performance in the world cup in South Africa. The Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) was also dissolved while an interim board was appointed to take over the affairs of Football. The Government has directed its agencies like the Economic Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to investigate the affairs of the NFF in order to find out how funds were spent before and during the world cup in South Africa with little or nothing to show for the funds, there have been allegations of gross misappropriation of funds in NFF by the Government.
The Suspension has also incurred the wrath of the world football organising body FIFA whose policies do not condone government interferences with the running of National Football federations.
The point here is that suspending the Super Eagles, dissolving the NFF and probing them may be significant even if handled correctly to a logical conclusion but may not be enough in the long run to smoothen the affairs of the NFF and Football as a whole in Nigeria. It is true that football is the most popular sports in the world and in fact the major sports given topmost priority in Nigeria by the Government in terms of resources, and sports with the highest fans and mostly watched by households, but over the last decade the performance of most if not all levels of football in Nigeria from the Super Eagles, to the golden eagles and down to the local leagues have seriously declined and are calling for an entire overhaul.
One major problem which Nigeria is facing is lack of seriousness towards our local league (The Nigerian Premier League).There is lack of adequate sponsorship, lack of adequate facilities and maintenance of our stadiums, inadequate awareness or promotion created for patronage, lack of confidence and respect in our local players, inadequate exposure to crowd pressure, very little pay package compared to the foreign-based players, embezzlement of funds even when funds are allocated ,low and biased standards kept by referees during matches and low control as regards age of players. The worst part of it all is that our National Team Coaches depend mostly on foreign players by ratio of 9:1 and leading to lack of motivation on the local players.
The last qualifiers for the 2010 world cup saw the national coach Amodu Shuaibu, then refusing to heed the advice of the Chairman of the Nigerian premier league Oyuiki Obaseki to attend local leagues and pick players even when the super eagles were in real danger of not qualifying. The coach insisted on utilising mostly foreign-based players with the exception of just two local players and this lead to fire brigade approach in training and selecting players in the team for very crucial qualifying matches. Nigeria managed to qualify for the 2010 world cup. Today also we see Nigerians watching and analysing with passion and vigour, players and teams in European (EUFA) and Spanish Leagues thereby becoming staunch fans. They place banners, stickers to show their support and loyalty, but this cannot be replicated to our local leagues.
The second major issue is the direct interference of Sports Ministry in activities of the NFF.
The Sports ministry in Nigeria continually interfere with the activities of NFF being that football is the major sports with the highest source of revenue and various levels of International Football organised by FIFA periodically. The interference even gets to point of influencing the selection of football players or allowing for sacred treatment for some players leading to indiscipline to coaches, team and nation and consequentially low performance of players. In a country where there are several other sports federations like basketball, athletics, volleyball, lawn-tennis, swimming, baseball etc, there is no reason why the ministry should not expand its scope and make these sports as active as football. Nigerians have a lot of talented young men and women who could harness their talents and bring pride to the country. These sports just like the local league are continually decaying and not seeing the light of day due to its neglect by the government. We now have a few “lucky ones” out of the whole talented bunch going abroad to train or nationalise in and represent other countries while the others out of frustration may not have the full opportunity to either showcase their talent or may not perform even up to average in international competitions if and when they finally qualify. Likes of Blessing Okagbare, Gloria Alozie and Francis Obikwelu, Damola Osayomi are in foreign countries either training, schooling or have decided to “decamp” due to neglect and lack of support from the Federal Government. If the sports ministry could cut down a chunk of what it spends on hosting International football competitions, paying allowances to NFF Officials, Football coaches, ill-prepared foreign-based players and channel towards other sports federation and talents, Nigerian sports would be better for it. Let us remember that football is just one sport out of a whole lot in Olympics and despite the fact there are twenty two players in the team, any medal would be regarded as just one medal won. Nigeria has thirty recognised sports which are all crying for adequate attention.
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