The remains of Nigerian Football!
Categories: Football
Written By: Segun Odegbami
On my way home the other day I listened to a short interview on Brila Fm radio that Chief Adegboyega Onigbinde granted. He was responding to a question about his reaction to the loss of Nigeria’s home-based Eagles against their Nigerien counterparts! He said that Nigerians are reaping what they ‘sowed’ in Nigerian football. Without any developmental programme in the country’s football firmament the country is witnessing what is left of Nigerian football. A top official of the National Sports Commission also took a look at the state of the game in the country and lamented that what is left of the game is the by-product of a systematic destruction of the game’s structure orchestrated by a cabal that has been controlling Nigerian football for many years! A cursory look at the state of the game reveals that both gentlemen were wrong, the situation is even worse – there is nothing left! Look around Nigerian football for a few minutes. At the just-concluded Glo/CAF awards that recognises African footballers that did well in 2009, there could not have been a better graphic illustration of the situation than the absence of any Nigerian on the podium throughout the event. The silence on Nigerian players was deafening! Not one single award was won on merit by a Nigerian player. No Club-side won anything from the continental championships. The standard of female football has dropped to alarming levels. Nigeria lost all the age-group championships even when it had the advantage of playing one on familiar turf, before a home crowd and with several unsavoury win-at-at-cost antics! Although the domestic leagues, in spite of the huge funding support they received in the past 3 years, may have nudged up marginally in terms of their standards, there is still a lot of room for improvement. The non-inclusion of Nigerian referees at international championships speaks to the question: what is wrong with Nigerian referees? The National Institute for Sports, NIS that trains Nigerian coaches and administrators is all but dead. It admits students and graduates them worse off than they were when entering the institution. Bad education is worse that no education! The flagship of Nigerian football is the Super Eagles. With all due respect to the patriotic assembly of players in the present team, the present Super Eagles must rank amongst the weakest in terms of quality of players, performance and achievement in over 30 years! Those that should bear the blame for this poor state are those who, 4 years ago, promised to take Nigerian football to new heights only to leave Nigerians almost at the end of their tenure totally dispirited with their darling team and with the game as a whole!
Nigerian football needs rescue and redemption! Where will help come from but from the Nigerian people who must ‘shine’ their eyes, look critically at what is being offered them as statutes by the present Board, read between the lines and between the small prints to discover what is buried therein as tools of survival for the present members, and land mines for those who dare to challenge them at the next elections in August. The World Cup provides an umbrella under which the entire country can find some respite from ongoing political manipulations between now and July 11, after which everyone would retire to the cocoon of their narrow interests and project into what lies ahead for football in Nigeria. For me I just hope that the future offers better prospects than the past or even the present!
Chief Adegboyega Onigbinde was right. When we put in place no authentic development programmes, institutions and strategic plans, retrogression sets in. That’s what has happened to Nigerian football. Sadly, only the carcass remains!
April 1st, 2010 at 9:19 PM
I read this article immediately after going through some pictures on the social networking page of ex-eagles star, Charles Okonkwo, where i saw some great pictures of players, teams and stadia of old. Memories of good old Nigerian football days flooded back on seeing the funny-looking jerseys and micro-shorts, dusty black boots and the afros on great players like, Igwillo, Ofoje, Agada, Sadi, Fawole, Amoo, Surugede, Njamenze, Temile etc. I have chosen some of these names, which may sound obscure to some fans, because these were all household names despite some of them not playing for the Eagles. They were players that made people filled the grounds because of their different qualities. And i ask myself, would there be ever be a day we will ever see a local FA cup final that had the stadium filled to the brim like the days of Abiola babes V Leventis?
In my opinion, i think the problem of Nigerian football goes beyond the administrators (i am not absolving them of it entirely though) but rather the sad state of the country as a whole. Security is poor hence people feel unsafe to go to the stadium to watch matches. How many times have we witnessed fans jumping over the barricade onto the pitch to beat up the referee or use a weapon on the match official. If the match officials, who are just about five in number, can be effectively protected, what chance do the fans have?
Poverty level in the country is another factor. Good players hardly play for four (4) seasons in the local league before they are shipped for trials in Europe where they are sold for peanut. Regardless of how poor they are paid, they are usually better off than when playing in Nigeria and as a result contentment sets in. Contentment of being able to feed themselves as well as send a token home to their families, and there dies the hunger and zeal to aspire for a bigger club, afterall they now play in ‘Europe’ and who cares if it is Moldova, Malta or even Estonia? Here, most of them. are made to start their soccer education all over again as they were hardly the finished article before leaving home, coupled with the harsh weather they are faced with. The Keshis, Mutius, Amunekes etc had an identity before leaving for pastures green overseas. I remember an article long time ago in which the great Henry Nwosu recalled how he ran back to Nigeria when he couldn’t cope with the weather in Europe. Not everyone can.
Away wins are rarities because the match officials can’t refuse a bribe as they have families to feed, and an extra from the home team on their match allowances won’t do any harm. The young footballers can’t resist the lure of few dollars from agents which translates to lots of Naira and the football administrators must line their pockets as quickly as possible as they know they won’t be in power forever. Income is poor generally and the few who can afford it would rather use it as subscription to watch the English premiership every weekend. And what about the local coaches taking money from agents to field the players they manage? It’s all messy and all boil down to the integrity factor lacking in most of us. Everything is about money and money is everything to us.
Until we rise up collectively to fight corruption and start thinking of the other person and not just ourselves, the country won’t just lose its unifying symbol, football, it could lose everything that makes up the country. It’s time for a change and it doesn’t start or end with football. God help Nigeria.