The greatest challenge facing football development at grassroots level in Nigeria is that of cheating.  Age falsification, document falsification, use of non bona-fide students, use of mercenary players, all have become ills that have be-devilled the country’s football development for many decades.  So entrenched is the scourge that many people think it has become intractable. The ‘gains’ of victory are so tempting that players, their officials and even parents connive to make their wards play and win at all costs and by all means. Many of the players do anything (steal, cheat, lie, alter documents) just to get a chance to play at junior levels where they think their chances of being seen and caught in the web of scouts and coaches are brighter.  Thats why for years many football purists have been playing catch-up with the cheats, and do not seem to be making progress or achieving any success in dealing with the scourge. Even as the entire country is preparing for this year’s final matches, an unfortunate incident has opened the wound of this cancer. In dealing with it the way the organisers have done, I believe it will serve as a warning and a deterrent to all those that choose the short-cuts in order to win.

I was a part of a Nigerian football delegation to South Africa last year. The Under-13 junior secondary school team of Asegun Comprehensive High School, Ibadan, Oyo State, had won the national Milo Under-13 championship and qualified to represent the country at the first Under-13 African championship in South Africa sponsored by Milo.  The school went to South Africa, played against teams from Kenya, Cote D’ Ivoire, Ghana and South Africa and emerged proud winners. It was a great performance and a deserved victory for the young lads. The students were treated to lavish receptions and received on their return as heroes in Oyo State.  That is how it should be. I started looking forward to see some of the students graduate into their schools senior team to participate in the 2011 NNPC/Shell Cup.

 You can imagine my joy when I saw the reports from the zonal preliminaries of the on-going 2011 championship and noticed that Asegun Comprehensive High School had emerged as the winners from the Oshogbo zone ahead of three other States. I was looking forward to seeing them at the quarter-finals. But then, along with the report from the coordinator of the zone came a protest from the school representing Lagos State concerning the ineligibility of two of the students from Asegun.  Protest cases are usually treated seriously particularly when they are about cheating as their outcome can seriously affect the credibility and integrity of the entire championship.  So serious is the concern about eligibility that a new organisation has been established to introduce the technology that will keep a data bank of information on all participants in the competition for future reference and posterity.  The technology, powered by Intercontinental Bank, is being used in this year’s championship and the incident provided an opportunity to test its efficacy even in this embryonic state.   I did not think much would come out of the protest for two reasons – my interaction with the team’s officials last year in South Africa where they saw how vigorously I pursued the matter of cheating even at that international level, and because four years ago, the same Asegun school had been banned for two years for cheating and would not dream of doing so again following that first experience. So I thought!

The protest from Lagos State immediately brought investigators from the Nigeria School Sports Federation, NSSF, the organisers of the competition, into the picture.  The Asegun school authorities were contacted. The West African Examinations Council, WAEC, were contacted. All documents concerning the school’s student admissions, past WAEC examinations, and registration forms from previous championships were assembled and scrutinised.

The findings were revealing.  Wale (surname withheld) is one of the two students under scrutiny.

Wale was a member of Asegun Comprehensive High school for the 2009 edition of the NNPC/Shell Cup. In the registration forms filled by his school that year, signed by the Principal and counter-signed by a representative of the Oyo State Commissioner for Education, Wale was 16 years old and in SS2 class.  He played during the competition for the school wearing the number 14 jersey. His school got to the quarter-finals of the championship.  All the documents relating to the player and containing all the above-information, including photographs, are available and are intact with the NSSF.

 Then comes year 2011. Wale is again in the schools team, which was no problem. The issue now is that in his new registration form he is still in SS2 but is now 15 years old with a completely new date of birth! The only ‘explanation’ is that Wale is growing younger!

Although the protest by Lagos State is that the player had graduated from the school two years ago, there was no evidence available to the organisers to verify this. A check at WAEC showed that his name could not be found in the list of students from the school that sat for WAEC in the past 2 years. We reasoned, therefore, that it is either that he is not a bonafide student of the school or that he has been repeating a class and has not sat for the WAEC exams yet. But how do we explain the age discrepancy?

It is clear that some falsification has happened somewhere along the line. The NNPC/Shell Cup championship forbids it.  Asegun Comprehensive High school,  as a result of  this obvious ‘fraud’, will not be allowed to continue in the competition. Their position will be taken over by the school that came second in the zone (Lagos) and the matter reported to the education authorities in Oyo State for further investigation and possible sanctions. The NSSF shall look into the matter and also take their own decisions. Thats the ultimate price for cheating -  a shameful failure!