At 87, Herbert Omokhaye is still passionate about football and he is pained that those in charge of the round leather game in Nigeria are not doing enough to unearth talents for the country. The former Secretary General of the Nigeria Football Association (NFA) lamented the lackadaisical attitude of administrators who have failed to show serious interest in the development of the sport. The former Lagos UAC defender told OLALEKAN OKUSAN that until those overseeing the game show serious interest in growing the game, the fortune of Nigeria football would continue to dwindle.
HERBERT OMOKHAYE was an astute administrator who oversaw the Nigeria Football Association (NFA) as Secretary General in the 1960s for two years which gave him an insight into the abundant of talents that abound in Nigeria.
As a former footballer, who played for Lagos UAC as a defender, the Octogenarian is not too happy that there is no conscious effort to grow the game by those managing the sport lately.
“In our days, when we go for Annual General Meeting (AGM), most of our discussions were on football but unfortunately these days, what is being discussed is election and money. This is what is affecting our football when those that are saddled with the responsibility of developing the sport show no serious interest to lift its fortune. It is disheartening that a lot of talents are wasting away across the country with nobody to help them. There is no serious programme even at state level to grow the sport.
“In our days, the AGM was used to assess the activities of each state football association in terms of their programmes and the talents they have discovered in the course of the year. But what do we have today, we have people who are only interested in the goodies the sport will bring without a deliberate effort to develop football,” the erstwhile scribe of the Nigeria (Football) Referees Association (NRA) noted.
From 1964 to 1965, Omokhaye was seconded to the NFA from the National Sports Council (NSC) its secretary, which metamorphosed into National Sports Commission in 1970.
As a footballer, Omokhaye played as a defender in the Challenge Cup finals in the 1950s for Lagos UAC and the Federal United which was a model club that some elites in Lagos founded.
Omokhaye’s romance with football started at Methodist Boys High School in 1950, where as a student he joined the Lagos UAC club as a left-sided defender in 1951 before moving to SCOA in 1955. He featured for Federal United in the Challenge Cup final of 1958 before hanging his boot in 1961 to start a career in sports administration.
It was while serving as the General Secretary of the Lagos Amateur Football Association (LAFA) in 1962 that he joined NFA as scribe. Not done with football, Omokhaye fell in love with refereeing and he rose to the top in 1975 and retired in 1981 to become a match commissioner the following year.
Recalling one of league matches he handled between IICC and Rangers at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) in the 1980s, Omokhaye said: “I was the centre referee in the league match involving Rangers and IICC and at half time, Jim Nwobodo who was then campaigning to become Governor of Enugu came to the stadium and on resumption of the second half, I just discovered that the likes of Emmanuel Okala and Christian Chukwu walked off the field to greet Nwobodo. So I had to issue a red card to Nwobodo to leave the field so that the players can come in to finish the match. That was an experience I would not forget in a hurry because a referee must take decisions regardless of the personality involved.”
On the comparison between NFA and NFF, Omokhaye said: “Too many people are interested in football now because of the money in it but in our days, the important positions were chairman, vice chairman and secretary. All the other representatives from regions were there because of their interest in the sport and there was no problem with administration. We had AGM were every region will present reports of their activities but today everyone is scheming on how he would win election and go for trips with the national teams because of money. Even as NFA, we had little control over the state FAs, because they have programmes and activities that will also help the NFA to have a pool of players that will represent the country.”
He added: “Now everyone is interested in football administration because of money. The only time we get money in those days is when we are given transport fare to AGM. These days, how many times do they debate about football as the AGM? They hardly talk about football but about election and money issues. In those days, people are passionate about the sport as matches involving national teams are discussed and the coaches will always bring their suggestions to meetings.”
“Lately, how many interstates competitions do we have now apart from National Sports Festival (NSF) and the Federation Cup? In those days, we had friendly matches among states and clubs as well as local tournaments and this help the development of football as more talents were discovered.
“Today, we have a lot of good footballers languishing across the country because there are no opportunities for them to display their skills or get discovered. The only thing NFF is interested is to compete in international tournaments. That is why the coach will live abroad and look for players there. I can tell you that there are many players in Nigeria that can be groomed to become top stars,” he added.
He rues the fortune of the local football league, saying: “Enyimba for me is not a football club but a government parastatal because they don’t have internal competition in Abia where more footballers will be unearthed. In those days, there were internal competitions among teams in each state. But now, everybody in a state concentrate on a single club and such club is like an arm of government. “With this there is too much interference from government.
“It is sad that it will take a long time to get it right. Also we don’t have philanthropist like Okoya-Thomas who supported table tennis throughout his lifetime and all the people that should have been helping Nigeria now go abroad to watch foreign leagues. I cannot see the situation changing soon if it will change at all. If I tell you I don’t know anything about Nigeria football I am not being sincere. Unfortunately, we still have the same set of people in charge of the football for years which shows that football is not moving forward,” he stated.
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