The Nation Newspaper

Category: Ade Ojeikere

  • Who cursed Nigeria’s sports?

    Who cursed Nigeria’s sports?

    The things other countries seamlessly do with their national soccer teams, Nigeria’s administrators mostly bungle. Such flaws make us a laughing stock in the comity of football nations. The Moroccans were at the Women’s World Cupthat was  co-staged by Australia and New Zealand and didn’t flinch, at the chance, to hire the coach who led the Spanish girls to win the Women’s World Cup.

    Spain’s squad was enmeshed in crises that prompted a few of their top stars to opt out of the team owing to their relationship with the coach. The trouble boiled over with the infamous kiss in which the  Spain’s FA President and a player were involved. Not forgetting the players’ mutiny against the coach.

    The English had issues with their FA over their entitlements. They didn’t allow that to dovetail into a controversy as we usually do in Nigeria. One of the African nations to the Australia and New Zealand Women’s World Cup fiesta, Zambia, accused their head coach of sexually assaulting  some   girls, who were  ready to spill the beans. They, however, managed the offensive and shameful act inside their camp. Thus, allowing the coach to do his job.

    It is close to two months after the Women’s World Cup, and Nigeria is still burdened by the ripples associated with the female Mundial that culminated in Super Falcons players and their Nigerian assistant coaches arriving in Addis Ababa, while  their American coach, Randy Waldrum, was  unavailable. Prior to this incident, this writer had written in Monday’s edition of Sportinglife that Waldrum had dumped the Nigeria’s job to face his university assignment. 

    It is quite disturbing that a nation  of over 200 million people could employ a coach on part time basis. This development beats this writer hollow just as it brings odium on Nigeria as a sovereign nation. In fact, what Waldrum did, by not showing up in Ethiopia, is a slap on our faces and such should never happen again. We may not have forgotten how Waldrum literarily labelled the Glasshouse chieftains as crooks asking that they should explain how they disbursed FIFA’s $960,000 given to all the participating countries at the last FIFA Women’s World Cup co-hosted by New Zealand and Australia.

    Waldrum made NFF men his drumsticks, which caused a stir each time he remembered his unpaid wages, which mostly run into seven months. The NFF vs Waldrum brickbats from deep inside the dingy gutter splashed their contents on the Super Falcons, who suddenly remembered the federation’s failed promises to pay their entitlements and outstanding match-winning bonuses. What a country. All these allegations and counterclaims litter the media with people offering suggestions to settle the issues raised.

    By sheer providence, Waldrum was allowed to handle the Supper Falcons at the World Cup with the coach fighting his Nigerian assistants much to the consternation of his employers. Somehow, Waldrum agreed to work with another Nigerian, whose inclusion in the squad changed the team’s playing records of seven consecutive losses to one that had a new dawn in fortunes, recording six wins, two draw games and two losses in ten games. You would think that the Nigerian would be the ultimate choice whenever Waldrum returns with his tantrums.

    Not so with NFF, who are specialists in swallowing their vomit with relish as they went back to offer Waldrum, another part-time contract. Not to be fooled again by employers, who claimedto be incompetent and only needed Nigeria’s appearance at the last World Cup to enrich his Curriculum Vitae (CV) as a coach, Waldrum shocked NFF when he told them that he could only honour one of the two-legged games against Ethiopia in Addis Ababa and in Abuja both in the month of October. Wkadrum misinformed his employers that he had pressing family issues, whereas he needed to prepare his University of Pittsburgh Panthers women’s side for a crucial game slated for October 27.

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    All efforts to get Waldrum to be with the squad in Ethiopia failed even when the American has a subsisting contract which ends on October 31. In the course of persuading Waldrum to handle the two-legged ties, the NFF chiefs in their wisdom told him that his contract would be signed before the game in Abuja. Sadly, the part-time coach with Nigeria opted to honour his permanent employers, the  University of Pittsburgh Panthers with his presence and technical savvy for the October 27 cracker holding in America. Who won’t do that if left in the manager’s position?

    Sometimes, it is difficult to understand how those who run our football arrive at their decisions. Otherwise, how could the federation think of offering Waldrum another contract in spite of all he said to ridicule the NFF members? The American coach knows who his real employer is and sticks to the tenets of the contract he signed with them unlike with Nigeria where he is a part-time coach. Isn’t Nigeria too big to recruit a part-time coach for the Super Falcons given the team’s pedigree in the women’s game?

    Granted, the Super Falcons did well at the Women’s World Cup, but Waldrum’s attitude before the competition left much to be desired. I thought the NFF members would have emulated the Spanish, who sacked the FA President for an unwholesome attitude with one of their players on the podium during the gold medals presentation in Australia.

    The Spanish noticed that they were left with clay pot and rat setting in getting the female team back on the field except they dispensed with the services of the coach who won them the World Cup. They sacked the World Cup-winning coach and began to speak with the girls, especially those  who opted out of the squad, owing to the presence of the sacked head coach. Sapin’s loss has become Morocco’s gain. The sacked coach is now in Africa. I hope we won’t be shocked when the Moroccans become the dominant nation in Africa in women’s football. Who cursed Nigeria, please?

    Worried about the imminent slide in the women’s game in Nigeria going by the botched attempt to retain Waldrum, I sought the views of a former staff of the NFF, Dr Christian Emeruwa, who vied for the position as the federation’s President, but lost to the incumbent, Ibrahim Gusau, on the reason the federation opted to keep Waldrum in the mid of many domestic coaches and ex-internationals.

    Dr Christian Emeruwa, Head of the Safety and Security Department of CAF  revealed via WhatsApp on Thursday night from Cairo that: ”Coaching like any other discipline is not restricted by location or boundary we have some Nigerians that have done their bit and still doing so abroad some have coached clubs and others national teams. But I do not understand why some people feel that coaching our national team is a birthright when it is clear that they have nothing more to offer. A lot only have the national team coaching job as a reference. For these groups, I have no respect.

    ”There are also the idealist proponents that are advocating  national team A coaching job to be given to ex-Internationals, most of whom do not have enough experience and some who have not even trained in the act, but forced into the technical crew, using the reference of their playing days as a criteria. I believe that Nigeria needs to do more in the development of coaches’ capacity and to position them for opportunities even outside the shores of Nigeria. But this can only happen if such coaches are seen doing well with clubs and teams from Nigeria first.

    ”Sports administration respects the principle of appointing qualified personnel to positions if only we can accept to implement this and make positions competitive. Then we should expect the best out of our coaching crew at all levels. Another thing I have noticed in Nigeria sports circles is that most occupants of sports key positions only speak of what needs to be done when they are out of the office, but never when they are in office, “Dr Emeruwa wrote.

    Could this be the principle of not talking while eating or simply the ability to see clearer and reason better once out of the driver’s seat, dear reader? You tell me, please.

  • Uzoho’s own goal

    Uzoho’s own goal

    Nothing hurts me any more whenever the Super Eagles have a game.  I always expect the worst. Not that I don’t love my country, I do. The presence of negative vibes in the  Super Eagles’camp before, during and after big games can, to say the least, suffocate anyone. The vibes that glamourise efforts and achievements, which pop up people’s adrenalin, are  not in sync with the can-do-it spirit of Nigerians when games are being played.  I’ve, since the France ’98 World Cup, developed a thick skin towards Super Eagles potopoto (rubbish in pidgin English) football . I discovered after the games, which Nigeria lost in France that the coaches, players and officials, NFF members inclusive couldn’t be bothered if Nigeria had just beaten and what the defeats or ouster from major tournaments meant to the Super Eagles’ teeming fans all over the world, especially on the streets in the 774 Local Government Areas of the country.

    Back home in Nigeria, during the France’98 World Cup,  there was the possibility that Nigeria could meet Brazil at another big sporting event, two years after the Nigerian Olympic Dream Team 1 had beaten the Brazilians in Atlanta.  If Nigeria had beaten Denmark in the second round game, Brazil was the next team, according to the fixtures. Sadly, the Danes beat Nigeria 4-1, expectedly but a lot happened back home. Fans, who had started making and distributing designed memorabilia and organizing warm up sporting activities for the match between the two teams (Nigeria and Brazil again) had their dreams thrown into the lagoon. Yes, Nigerians lost a lot of revenue from that fantasy pairing that never was. I digress!

    So, when I saw Francis Uzoho palm a harmless aerial ball into his net, it was something typical of the Super Eagles during matches. My mind raced back to Uzoho’s heart-wrenching fall, not dive as the goal scored by Black Stars of Ghana’s captain Partey rolled lazily into the net at the National Stadium in Abuja. Uzoho’s needless error cost Nigeria her place among the comity of nations at the Qatar 2022 World Cup. Only if Uzoho had followed the movement of the ball on the field before Partey’s lazy shot.

    Several posers ran through my mind. The first was to see Jose Peseiro’s reaction to the miserable effort by Uzoho, not forgetting the cynical look of the team’s captain Wilfred Ndidi. But for rules of the game, Ndidi would have removed, at least, four teeth from Uzzoho’s mouth. Thank you Ndidi,  for being the sportsman that you are. Ndidi, your look was captured by everyone who has seen the game.

    Peseiro left Uzoho on the pitch for the 90minutes duration because he didn’t have a better goalkeeper on the bench. Those on the bench sat there because they live in European countries close to Portugal where the team played their matches. The second question would be to ask Peseiro where he saw those goalkeepers such as Adebayo Adeleye (Hapoel Jerusalem, Israel) and Maduka Okoye that he was scared to field after Uzoho’s own goal against Nigeria.

    Of course, Peseiro was never going to field home-based goalkeeper Olorunleke Ojo (Enyimba FC) for all the money in the world. So, the Portuguese stuck with Uzoho in goal for the second friendly in Portugal against Mozambique. Was anyone expecting Uzoho to shine against the Africans? Certainly not. You can’t give what you don’t have, dear reader. What stands out clearly from Peseiro’s response to Uzoho’s  poor form is that we can measure the criteria used in picking Super Eagles players. The coach does whatever he likes by openly inviting benchwarmers and recuperating ones to camp. It is obvious that members of NFF’s Technical Committee are stooges who can’t expose Peseiro’s mercantile tendencies in selecting players for the country’ matches.

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    Incidentally, the NFF chiefs aren’t ready to dispense with Peseiro’s services even with the  team’s sickening outings over time. Indeed, those African nations that would do well at the Africa Cup of Nations  next  are using their friendly games to strengthen their squads. They have the nucleus of their first 13 players. What their friendly games are doing for the coaches is to introduce depth in strengthen, width in they play and ensure that they can play at least four systems in either halves depending on how well or how poorly the opposition would play during matches.

    Ironically, Nigeria has wasted the friendly games she has played so far if the team’s major problem is to search for a good goalkeeper when others have three equally good goalkeepers and more for some others such as Senegal. The NFF members and their choice of those who would function in key committees leaves a sour taste in the mouth. Had the technical committee been made of men of sterner stuff, they would have spoken to the two shambolic outings the Super Eagles played in the last ten days. We would have had an insight about howthe players were selected for the two matches against Saudi Arabia and against Mozambique.

    The fallout from the technical committee members’ revelation would have shown us if they were part of the selection exercise. Isn’t time for Nigerians to know the parametres for picking players for games. During the Clemens Westerhof era, you could bet that goalkeepers such as Uzoho and Okoye won’t be considered. You could offered to put your head on the guillotine if Kenneth Omeruo, Tyronne Ebuehi,  Joe Ayodele-Aribo, Chidozie Awaziem et al won’t go near the team’s bus let alone file out onto the pitch for matches given their performances in previous games. No prize, dear reader for guessing right that no benchwarmer would have made Westerhof’s list. Westerhof ignited the domestic league centres with his presence and young lads seized the stage to impress the Dutchman who took risk on those he discovered. Once Westerhof spotted a talent, he did everything within his power to expose them to European clubs. These boys returned to play in the Super Eagles much to the consternation of Nigerians who may seen the boys play the games years back. The transformation in their game was awesome. And made other young lads in the domestic league to take games seriously, while waiting for another Westerhof expedition to league venues.

    Westerhof wasn’t a renowned coach but he knew what he wanted to achieve and went for it from his first assignment against Cameroon in 1989, dropping the big-headed boys. Nigeria lost 1-0, but the lessons learned were such that showed the calibre of players he invited to the team to fight for shirts.

    No country’s football grows at the senior level. Growth in any soccer side starts from the nursery which is situated at the grassroots. Nigeria’s case can be found in the 774 Local Government Areas in the country, only with proper organisation. Sadly, all manner of people including the federation’s chieftains have corrupted the nurseries such that youth clubs now loan players to professional teams in the country. Youth clubs owned by top federation chiefs dominate the country’s age-grade squads with the squad’s coaches filling the few spaces left with their mercantile choices. Isn’t this why we don’t know how much the domestic leagues are worth in the country despite the Star Trek to Europe of our youth who strive to earn a living from playing the game?

  • Refereeing is a hobby

    Refereeing is a hobby

    Club owners are funny people otherwise how could they be suggesting to the honourable sports minister Senator John Enoh on the need to reduce the number of referees handling the Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) for efficiency. Really?  The Club owners among other reasons hinged their claims on the laughable submission that the referees don’t handle enough matches to improve on their level of officiating. Honourable minister, sir, can these meddlesome interlopers tell us when last we played the full league of 380 matches in a 38 weeks format in Nigeria? These people spearheaded the abridged league format calling it a child of circumstance to cover up all the obstacles that have bedevilled the league in the last few years, beginning with their failure to comply with the Club licensing requirements. We need to encourage younger boys and girls to embrace the hobby called refereeing. It isn’t rocket science.

    What these all knowing people didn’t tell the sports minister is that those referees that CAF have complained about or excluded from their competitions  in the past were some of the best Nigerian referees, putting a lie to their purported assumption that with a reduction in the number of referees for the elite class, officiating would be perfect. Foul. This submission, honourable minister sir, creates the impression of having professional referees for the domestic league and a recipe for match fixing. Nowhere in the world is there a functional league with professional referees. Do we have more referees than England, Germany, Italy, France, Holland etc? No. So how do they keep their referees busy? Simple. These countries have several soccer competitions to engage their referees. Need I waste space to list the levels of football competitions in England? Limiting the number of referees who handle the elite league in Nigeria creates the platform for disaster through crowd violence. Rich clubs would pollute the referees and we would be back to the trenches. A distinction has to be made here between the Centre referees and the First and Second Assistant referees. The question is how many centre referees do we have to necessitate an unholy reduction simply because club owners want it their way? Not acceptable please. Why didn’t these owners tell the minister that there aren’t good playing pitches in the country? In fact, the country’s representatives to one of CAF’s inter-club competitions is playing outside its home ground?

    I had thought that these so-called group would have sought the sports minister’s intervention into the existing crisis between the previous league board and broadcast rights holders to the league. What can be more laughable than for Nigeria’s domestic league matches not being beamed live while hitherto smaller nations have theirs shown live on Supersport for everyone to watch? Referees won’t fumble during matches if they know the games are being beamed live on television. Club owners won’t cast an indulgent eye on home teams’ supporters who wreak havoc during games where their teams are wobbling.

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    The immediate response to this suggestion is that the concept of refereeing all over the world makes the whistling assignment a hobby, with only CAF toying with a proposal of selecting 23 referees from all over the continent to train them with the view of making them professional referees. The angst by this club owners like other Nigerians is that there isn’t any Nigerian referee among these chosen 23. Our referees not chosen failed the stringent conditions which CAF used to pick their 23 based on how the Nigerian referees fared in the federation’s inter-club matches. The dropped referees were not shown the exit based on how well or how badly they handled our domestic league’s matches. They fell short of the desired points to make the mark and such poor outings were recorded outside the country.

    Some of the mistakes made by our referees at CAF tournaments would have been corrected had the previous league board made the issue of showing our league games  live on television a priority. There could have been sessions where videos of games would have been reviewed and erring referees shown their mistakes and told what to do in the future to such situations. The talk to reduce the number of referees in the elite league in Nigeria is cheap.

    If the club owners truly wanted progress in the league, they would have pleaded with the honourable sports minister to intervene in the seeming impasse mitigating against  the NPFL matches being shown live. The live streaming currently in session by the Gbenga Otolorin Elegbeleye-led board is commendable, although having the games live on terrestrial television would have been the real deal. Perfect.

    We have seen referees handle games brilliantly in the first half only to return for the second half to misbehave, especially in the second round where every game points to either a good or bad future in the competition for teams. Investigations have shown that such diligent referees are given the beating of their lives by irate fans of the home team desperate to have the three points at stake for the game. Courageous referees have remained inside such dressing rooms where fans have invaded at half-time to bring their horrible experiences to the fore.

    These killjoys’ operations are targeted at the match referees, especially when their clubs and fans fail to coax the match arbiters to award frivolous penalty kicks against the opponents. Over 30,000 spectators can’t watch a game and an insignificant six people can’t run the rule on the referees’ performances. Indeed, I have looked out for the reports in the newspapers since week seven’s games were played and they haven’t hinged their reports on the referees’ poor outing but on the missed goal-scoring chances by the two teams.

    The referee is the sole judge of time and other things concerning the game. If in the opinion of the referee, a purported call for penalty isn’t worth his time and he decides to cast an indulgent eye on such incidents, so be it. Unfortunately, all our match venues don’t have CCTV devices built into the premises at strategic points to help fish out these people who love to smell blood at venues. I’ve seen a few games on camera and I’ve not been impressed by the security architecture of the venues. I only hope that the IMC isn’t waiting for the worst things to happen before allowing irritants to know what lies ahead of them in the event of crisis before, during and after games.

    The Police are our friend, we have been told. Therefore, the IMC ought to hold critical meetings with the Inspector General of Police (IGP), State Police Commissioners and other security agencies to secure the stadia before, during and after matches. After all, the primary job of security operatives is to secure the lives and properties of the citizenry. Plainclothes operatives need to sit among the fans so that it would be easier to spot those with unsportsmanlike conduct to face the full wrath of the law. It is done in civilised climes. We have seen instances where roughnecks are bundled out of the stadium with every uncouth act inimical to the people around such a repulsive yoyo.

    These merchants of death who have as their mantra do-or-die are growing in their numbers and need to be checked before they wreak havoc at match venues by inciting innocent fans to share in their perilous comments. It is the only way to nib the violence since the unwanted weapons come from the spectators. If the first person who throws his or her empty bottle onto the pitch is caught red-handed and taken away to the parked Black Maria vans, other urchins would be advised to be of good conduct. The language which criminals understand is force. Indeed, acts of violence start from the fans at the stand who have objects such as umbrellas, sachets and/or bottles of water, food packs etc which come in handy as weapons of mass destruction during mayhems.

  • Deaf, dumb, but not blind

    Deaf, dumb, but not blind

    Chieftains of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) and the Super Eagles Head Coach Jose Peseiro love to be misrepresented by behaving like people who are deaf and dumb when it comes to sensitive issues surrounding the game such as striving to save cost on their operations. But since they derive joy in abusing our sensitivities by inviting as many as 27 foreign-based to prosecute international friendly games, it is clear that there isn’t anything wrong with their sights.

    Interestingly, the inclusion of Enyimba FC of Aba’s goalkeeper Olorunleke Ojo is either a smokescreen or that one of the big guns or is it one of the coaches is positioning him for the transfer market in January as a Nigerian international. There are a few Rivers United FC of Port Harcourt who can play for the Super Eagles against Mozambique based on their experiences playing continental football in the last three seasons. Why none of them is worthy of an invitation tells the better with the absence of the team’s Head Coach Peseiro.

    As the Super Eagles get set to face Saudi Arabia for the second time ever and Mozambique for the fifth time, Head Coach, Jose Santos Peseiro has recalled some players who have been sidelined in recent matches. This is a clear case of fixation on Peseiro’s part, leaving the domestic game worse off. No wonder the Eagles totter against countries with better exposed and talented players than ours.

    The first backlash arising from Peseiro’s disrespect towards the domestic league is that Nigeria’s squad to the CHAN Cup would be whipped if they do qualify. For now, Nigeria’s CHAN side is in limbo with the NFF members in awe of Peseiro. Pity!

    The Super Eagles take on the Green Falcons of Saudi Arabia in the city of Portimão, Portugal on Friday,  October 13, starting at 5pm. It is the second time that both teams will meet. Both teams have played a friendly match at Alpenstadion,

    Austria on 25 May 2010 as part of the Super Eagles’ build-up to the World Cup in South Africa. It ended goalless.

    After the match with Saudi Arabia, the Super Eagles will take on Mozambique apparently as a test match to prepare for the country’s World Cup qualifiers against the two South African nations of Lesotho  and Zimbabwe next month. If Nigeria cannot beat Saudi Arabia and Mozambique with an admixture of foreign-based and home-based players, we shouldn’t say that Nigeria is a football nation.

    Sadly, NFF and Peseiro have chosen to damn the consequences of their wastefulness of scarce resources  hiding under one finger – that they need the country’s foreign legion to play against Saudi Arabia as a means of blending the squad for the Africa Cup of Nations slated to hold in Cote d’Ivoire from the second week of January next year.

    It is easy and could be true for the NFF and Peseiro to say that the organisers of the friendly games insisted on Nigeria playing her big boys. True, but did the organisers also give Nigeria  the list of invited players including those not playing regularly for their European clubs? That certainly can’t happen. Nigerians can’t be fooled by the retinue of unsung Europe-based players, given the fact the world is a global village in which all that anyone can do to watch games to monitor our players’ exploits in Europe, America and the Diaspora are on the internet under different platforms.

    What the list of players picked for the Saudi Arabia and Mozambique friendly matches represents is that we may as well stop our domestic leagues since there isn’t anything left for the home-based players to play for. It is also means that for them to play for Nigeria if ever, they must submit themselves to the greed of shylock agents and European scouts or align with the mafia groups that decide who gets invited to play for Super Eagles. Pity. And NFF members are watching in awe.

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    Why is Nigeria paying Peseiro as much as $45,000 monthly, if he can’t reside in the country for six months with the ultimate objective to scout for fresh legs into the Super Eagles? Shouldn’t Peseiro have asked his deputies to pick five home-based players who they think can fit into his football philosophies if he feels so big to handle the exercise? If Peseiro trusted his Nigerian assistants’ tactical savvy, he would have known if the local coaches understands the messages he passes to his boys in training or not. But does Peseiro care less about our local coaches who our NFF chieftains deride with laughable rotation of personnel per game?

    Peseiro knows those coaches he wants to assist him and has chosen to employ them and pay them from his monthly salaries of $45,000. NFF members were myopic to have accepted this  kind of contract that would perpetually subordinate our domestic coaches to foreigners with no plan of them being bosses of the Super Eagles anytime soon. What a country!

    Isn’t this one of the reasons we can’t point at any Nigerian as the country’s best tactician? We pay lip service to training and retraining of our coaches hence CAF could insult our sensibilities by stating that any Nigerian league coaches without CAF’s C licence shouldn’t sit on the bench during matches. Can the NFF tell the world when last it organised  such a CAF C licence course for our coaches to apply and upgrade their coaching skills. Whose duty is it to organise coaching course for Nigerian tacticians?

    There are two types of coaches – those sacked and those waiting for the sack letter. Indeed, a coach is as good as his/her last game. The paradox in coaching is that when the team excel, the players take the credit with the media celebrating them to the high heavens. Wait for it, when the team loses games, the coach gets the stick with the players blaming the manager’s tactics that brought them glory in the past.

    We have seen several instances where NFF’s Technical Director Austin Eguavoen is left behind when the country has international matches. Yet potbellied members make the trips essentially for shopping. Isn’t sacrilegious for the man in charge as Technical Director is being made to rely of Peseiro’s account of the games he prosecuted before he can adopt a unique but workable playing pattern for our national teams?

    Peseiro is a visitor in a country he being paid $45,000 which indeed was higher than that. He arrives in Abuja seven days before a home game with the Super Eagles team list neatly folded inside his breast pocket unchallenged or should one say the list isn’t interrogated. He walks through immigration with a motley crowd of Portuguese who he claims is his technical assistants. Wonderful. Still stunned? Don’t because if the game is home fixtures, Peseiro and his ‘mechanics’ are ushered into the hotel by their Nigerian counterparts who struggle to outrun the other with most of them heading towards Peseiro to pick up his luggage and head for his hotel room. The Portuguese also enjoys the luxury of meeting his players in the countries where they have matches mostly for international friendly games against European nations.

    The NFF needs to have a functional Technical Department where matches involving Nigerians in  European clubs are recorded, discussed and tabulated to guide them when discussing the list of players to be picked for assignments. It amounts to a failure of leadership for NFF to release a list of players where three to four of them are injured. It is even more disturbing when players haven’t kicked the ball for the European teams for over ten to 12 weeks, yet they are listed for the country’s matches. It smacks of high-level fraud when those kinds of players arrive in the country only to pull out of the game after one training session.

  • Club owners indeed

    Club owners indeed

    Who can retrieve the beautiful game in Nigeria from club owners who want to serve as ‘owners of the clubs’ and also help to organise the league matches? Wouldn’t there be a conflict of interest at some points during the competition? Where is such a thing done with a candidate for an examination also becoming the examiner? Nobi juju be that? Isn’t it a shame that club owners who should be insisting on getting the league to be in tandem with the European leagues’ kickoff dates are the ones being the cog in the wheels of progress? If these people know their onions, they should be worried that the domestic league has no calendar on which the corporate world and well-meaning Nigerians can plan to render financial support to make the league solvent.

    Who doesn’t know when the European leagues start and end? No club owner dares challenge what has been in existence for a while. This calendar is what business firms and individuals use to plan their yearly fiscal budgets. The calendar guides them in arriving at business decisions to back the different leagues in Europe wholesomely. Firms’ monies aren’t theirs. They belong to shareholders whose decisions encourage them to plough their resources into sports businesses. Of course, no firm would love to associate its goods and services with organisations dogged with controversies, sharp practices etc.

    Club owners should do a quick rethink after reading what happened in Italy this week. On Wednesday, we saw how one Udinese FC of Italy player walked towards Victor Osimhen and demanded the Nigerian’s SSC Napoli of Italy’s shirt at halftime. Osimhen obliged him by taking off his top. Osimhen could afford the luxury of giving away his jersey knowing that even before coming onto the pitch before the game started, he had, at least, four others in his drawer in the team’s dressing room. Can any Nigerian club owned by these so-called people allow their players to swap shirts, let alone give out the club’s property even before the end of the game? These are the ones who want full disclosure. Meddlesome interlopers in the game, if you ask me. Have you asked yourself why Nigerian clubs hardly have the names of the players on the back of their shirts for easy identification? You tell me.  Who is it that would dare ask these club owners to disclose their jersey contracts? Where can any club owner point out where their jerseys and other apparel are in stock? Isn’t these kinds of shopping outlets that European clubs use to make themselves solvent?

     Some Nigerians just like to have power even if it means standing the truth on its head. Club owners want to hijack the league’s organisation in the face of all the ills and disservices in the game as perpetuated in the domestic league matches. Thrice the commencement date of the 2024 Nigeria Premier Football League was announced, but thrice it was postponed because the club owners had issues with certain aspects of the contracts signed by the league board. Really! The club owners wanted a full disclosure. What does that mean for a body that cannot tell us how much their clubs are worth? A body that cannot tell us how much they earn from gate takings for the year. A body that cannot tell the world how much they earned from intra and inter-club transfer fees?

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    Who is fooling who? How many clubs owned by these so-called people have websites where everything about the club is laid bare for the public scrutiny? Isn’t it ironic that a body that is so secretive in disclosing who the insurers of their clubs are now want to poke their noses in others’ affairs? A body, which takes delight in owing players, coaches and backroom staff their wages running into several months other times close to years, leaving their victims with the tardy option of self-help by seizing the clubs’ vans on away soils.

    A few years back, one of the state-owned clubs had its real owners seeking to revamp the squad. At a meeting, this real owner wanted to know the players on the payroll who were bona fide members of the team. This official was shocked to find out that the team’s big boys weren’t among the bona fide players. Those who truly made the team shine were there on loan. He lost his patience and ordered a proper investigation into the apparent shenanigan.

    Surprised? Don’t be. Such unsportsmanlike acts happen in most of these teams. You only realise this rip-off when such players sign for foreign clubs.  How many teams have fulfilled all the requirements enshrined in the Club Licensing Act? It is only in the NPFL that a club will sack as many as 25 players at the end of the season. The question, which throws itself up as a sore thumb is if such players have only one-year contracts. Wasn’t it a top club official who boasted that a league title-winning coach did nothing to help the club achieve the feat? The official boasted that he knew how the team won the title that year.

    This issue of graduated measures of fulfilling the Club Licensing requirements is simply a failure of leadership or should I say witchcraft, which shouldn’t be tolerated. Professional football began in 1990 in Nigeria and it is despicable to note that 33 years after the league still wears diapers in implementing basic rules of the game. It is equally disappointing that league boards can sit at meetings, and make pronouncements about the commencement of the competition’s kickoff dates yet won’t stick to it, indeed, it is customarily for previous league boards to announce kickoff dates like the new NPFL Board chairman  Gbenga Otolorin Elegbede has done by promising an August 26 date. True to type, the date was moved to September 9 and now today September 30. I hope the league games truly begin today.

    Club owners just trumpet what the NFF want the league board to do. NFF on its part would tell everyone that the league board is autonomous, yet the simple task of picking match officials is theirs just as the right to punish them. They are quick to tell you that it is the rule as provided by FIFA. NFF also appoints most of the league board members who are usually their allies. Anything not possible in the Nigerian league doesn’t exist.

    Nigeria’s sports administrators should always look at the bigger picture which looks forward to making the sporting industry the veritable ground for stemming unemployment in Nigeria. Is sports truly “play play” as one governor once described it? Who will challenge us to see sports as a  platform to bolster the country’s revenue? Doesn’t the government know that sports is the best vehicle for massive employment?

     Who can stop these undertakers from killing our league which has produced several soccer greats? Need I mention names?

     Yearly, our representatives in the CAF inter-club competitions complain of lack of matches to keep their players in competitive form as the reason for their early exits. Why the NFF executive board members have turned deaf ears to this disturbing trend beats one’s imagination. It doesn’t matter if the country’s representatives take turns being eliminated from every round of the competitions. What insults our sensibilities is the yearly explanation after the teams must have crashed out that we would do something and nothing gets done about it.

  • Who can save Amusan’s career?

    Who can save Amusan’s career?

    These are not the best of times for renowned world 100-meter women’s hurdles record holder, Tobi Amusan, over her failure to participate in the mandatory three-out-of-competition dope test which in itself is a grave infraction on the rules on such a matter. How Amusan escaped a ban remains a mystery which has perhaps compelled the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) to test the judgment. AIU had filed an appeal against World Athletics’

    Disciplinary Tribunal last month overturned the provisional suspension imposed on Nigeria’s hurdler, Tobi Amusan.

    The AIU on its X (formerly Twitter) handle, announced that it filed the appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) penultimate Friday – the eve of the expiration of the 30-day window for appeal.

    The World Athletics Disciplinary Tribunal had on 17 August lifted the ban on Amusan, claiming the athlete did not commit an anti-doping rule violation for Whereabouts Failures. The AIU in its post claimed it would not make further comment on the matter until the conclusion of the appeal.

    Indeed, Duro Ikhazuagbe, Thisday newspapers’ Group Sports Editor, himself an athletics guru told this writer that: ”You are suspended. If your appeal succeeds you are reinstated. AIU also has the right to appeal and take the matter to  CAS. A top athlete like Tobi cannot claim ignorance of Whereabouts tests unless she has something to hide. I still feel it must be carelessness. Tobi has done enough to get to where she is now.”

    What is clear is that AIU wants to test the veracity of the decisions to clear Amusan as provided by their rules books. It is also an opportunity for athletes who may fall into the trap set in the whereabouts rule which Amusan ran afoul of in the future. Indeed, in clearing Amusan, the body provided answers for two grounds out of three. It really doesn’t matter how many grounds. It could have been one. But, one just hoped that the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) members would not stand aloof in Amusan’s quest for justice by following through all the processes available to AIU in their appeal. The AFN should be prepared to foot Amusan’s bill for justice at the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) in Lausanne, Switzerland.

    These “Whereabouts” flaws would have been avoided had the AFN’s medical committee been functional. After all, Amusan won laurels running for Nigeria at the Commonwealth Games held in London, last year.

    Read Also: Minister salutes Amusan, Brume on Diamond League feats

    Amusan passed previous platforms to get justice over her innocence when the news first broke that she failed to observe the mandatory three out-of-competition dope tests.

    Divergent views abound in this Amusan saga! While some view it as the athletics regulatory body trying to apply the rules strictly, yet, some pundits see it as the usual dilemma that has become an albatross for a high-flying Black sportsman/woman. This latter position held by this school of thought is dotted with a litany of examples to buttress their argument. For instance, on March 6, 1993, Canadian sprinter, Ben Johnson, was banned for life by the world governing body for track and field after its doping commission affirmed that Johnson failed a second drug test that revealed abnormally high levels of testosterone, thus terminating the once blistering career of the Jamaican-born sprinter who once laid claim to the title of world’s fastest human. He suffered the humiliation of being stripped of a gold medal and world record in the 100-meter dash after he tested positive for steroids at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

    In January 2001, former world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson was suspended for three months and fined $5,000 by Michigan state officials for refusing to submit to a pre-fight doping test.

    It isn’t enough for our sports authorities to litter the media with a litany of congratulatory messages to Amusan. They need to face the brass task of getting the female hurdler to be cleared by the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS), with less than ten months to the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. Amusan is Nigeria’s surest gold medal potential if the country’s sports administrators know their onions. It would amount to a crass failure of leadership if Amusan is left alone to face the politics of clearance from previous verification agencies to date.

    It is instructive to remind AFN and NOC that AIU has won similar cases which they sent to CAS to adjudicate. What this translates to is that Amusan stands the chance of being banned by CAS if left to face the music alone. Indeed, AIU appealed Salwa Eid Nader (400m) from Bahrain and Christian Coleman of the USA’s clearance at CAS and won.

    Amusan’s innocence isn’t in doubt having participated in major athletic meets and cleared by the races’ organisers to have scaled the competition’s several dope tests. But AIU’s appeal smacks of not allowing Amusan to win at CAS to serve as an avenue for future athletes to exploit to escape the sanctions associated with the whereabouts rule. So what if Amusan scales the CAS hurdle if truly she is innocent of any kind of accusations of flouting the whereabouts rule on competitions’ dope tests?

    Honourable sports minister sir, this should be your first charge to show that you understand the dynamics associated with this kind of matter. The minister should get athletics experts to recruit lawyers whose forte rests with such matters for proper and informed representation at CAS before the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.

    A gold medal for Nigeria at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games from Amusan could catapult the country to an enviable position in the polity of sporting nations especially as we haven’t done too well at the global multi-sports competition in the past. The other likely sure bet for a medal is Ese Brume in the female long jump and the question remains, what have we done as a nation to supervise her preparations for the Olympics in Paris next year?

    Amusan and Brume are the two Nigerians with a top five ranking in the world for the women’s 100-meter hurdles and the women’s female long jump. Others such as in wrestling are potential medallists with former Commonwealth champion, Odunayo Adekuoroye qualifying for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games when she clinched a bronze medal in the women’s 57kg category at the  2023 World Wrestling Pre-Olympic Qualifiers in Belgrade, Serbia on Wednesday. The three-time former champion beat Turkey’s Elvira Kamaloglu 9 to 5 points in the third-place match.

    This writer had a good laugh whilst reading the story that three Nigerian boxers had qualified for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. I felt pity for the boxers because they would be fighting for honours only to be taught the new rules hours before their bouts. I couldn’t believe my eyes that we could ask coaches whose knowledge of the fistic trade was outdated. Other boxers at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games were punching non-scoring parts of their opponents who knew where to jab the Nigerians to get huge points haul. One only hopes that these set of boxers are abreast with the modern-day rules of the fistic trade.

    A  few years ago, I wrote here that our athletes shouldn’t be made to rely on philanthropists and sports-loving governors when they require funds to prepare themselves for national assignments. Other countries have several avenues to source funds, such as Sports Lottery Schemes and fund-raisers where the President sits at dinner with the corporate world to show the level of commitment towards such an exercise. Blue-chip firms are given tax incentives for what they pay into the projects’ coffers. The president’s speech will spur others not at the ceremony to join the queue.

    Civilised countries develop their sports through the neighbourhood system where facilities are built to engage the youth and push them away from social vices. Nurseries serve as the bases for storing the data of those discovered. Such information helps to nurture and monitor the good ones to stardom. Besides, nurseries lay the foundation where the athletes are taught the rudiments of the game. It is at such factories that playing styles and patterns unique to such countries are evolved.

  • NFF’s waste of cash (2)

    NFF’s waste of cash (2)

    The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) officials are confused people as epitomised in the ridicule surrounding the minutes of the body’s Annual General Assembly (AGA). Thrice, the communiqué released stating what transpired at the meeting had to be corrected with no significant change noticed. What it showed clearly was that anything in that communiqué wasn’t cast in stone – typical of all the decisions by the Federation in the past.

    Dear reader, how best can anyone describe wastefulness than with these examples. A few federation chieftains knew that even with a loss to Sao Tome (God forbid) Nigeria had already qualified for the next Africa Cup of Nations slated to hold in Cote d’Ivoire in January. Yet, the federation’s members watched with mouths agape as a Coach insisted on inviting 23 foreign-based players for a game against Sao Tome.

    Here is the waste in this decision. Having beaten Sao Tome at home in the first leg by 10-0, it was obvious that we were no mates and that was the need to field the country’s Team B players largely populated with home-based players with our best six foreign-based players. This federation didn’t think so. It allowed a journeyman coach to fly in 23 professionals from Europe on business class. Besides, each of these players would be paid $200 daily allowances. For beating Sao Tome 6-0, each of these players went back with $5000 as winning bonus. Please don’t do the arithmetic because it would run into between N360 million and N500 million at the going market rate of the dollar, likely at N900 per dollar? What else to do we call these kind of expenditures if the federation had the option of inviting 20 players who wouldn’t spend up to N8 million as their return tickets to save cost.

    Is the federation saying that Sao Tome would have beaten our home-based players with what they displayed in Uyo last Sunday? Tell any home-based player that he would be paid $5,000 after 90 minutes, he would grab his telephone and multiply N900 by $ 5000. He will die on the pitch knowing how his life would be transformed after the game. What a country where wasting cash is a way of life.

    NFF chieftains shortly before the commencement of the last Women’s World Cup roundly condemned the head coach of the Super Falcons Randy Waldrum and recommended the immediate sack of the American tactician even after the country exited from the competition. Forty-eight hours after the federation’s Annual General Assembly (AGA), the NFF members woke up from their slumber and suddenly realised that the Super Falcons had an Olympic Games qualifier against Ethiopia. What shocked many were the praises showered on Waldrum which put a lie on what was written about him on Sunday to the consternation of followers of the game.

    “We have given the Technical Committee the go-ahead to hold talks with Randy Waldrum as we consider an extension of his current contract with the NFF. They have to do this quickly as the team has a Women’s Africa Cup of Nations qualifying match next week.

    “The man has done well by leading the team to an impressive outing at the FIFA World Cup,” NFF President, Ibrahim Musa Gusau, said on Tuesday. Really, Presido. When did you realise these attributes about Waldrum? Dear President, would be fair to credit Waldrum with the changes in the Super Falcons without acknowledging the technical savvy and support Dr. Terry Eguaoje brought into the team. Until Eguaoje joined the Falcons, they had acquired the losing toga, having lost their last seven games. Eguaoje has double Doctorate degrees in Education. He is an Adjunct Professor at Universities in America and is currently, the Technical Director of Coaching Education for the Pennsylvania West Soccer Association – State FA to US Soccer Federation. He also is a Coach Educator and Instructor Educator for the US Soccer Federation – basically, he trains the coaches. Hello NFF, flaunt what Waldrum has? Currently NFF Consultant on Coaching and Development. He was the Super Eagles- Assistant coach and Match Analyst during AFCON in Cameroon.

    At the Women’s World Cup co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand, Eguaoje functioned as the Super Falcons – Assistant coach and Match Analyst.

    Except the NFF men are economical with the truth, they know that Waldrum didn’t want to see his Nigerian assistants and told them to their faces. The drafting of Eguaoje did the magic because Waldrum knew his abilities and capacity to train soccer teams having been taught by Eguaoje in one of the coaching courses at the American Soccer Federation

     What would they tell Waldrum who is still being owed at least some months’ salaries and didn’t benefit from the $10,000 largesse from the First Lady who would have gladly rewarded the American if he was at the State House in Abuja? A coach your federation described as incompetent. The coach insisted that the federation should account for how they spent FIFA’s $960,000 meant to prepare the Super Falcons for the last Women’s World Cup competition which was co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand.

    Like Nigeria, England had problems with their players, coaches and officials who were being owed some cash. They have sorted the mater. Not so, with federation members who lost the biggest chance to get the top players who were still in the country to meet with the First Lady Distinguished Senator Oluremi Tinubu at a scheduled meeting with the girls. Instead, NFF chose to allow the big girls such as Assisat Oshoala, Rashedat Ajibade et al to meet their state governors to avert any drama which the girls could have caused.

    The hierarchy of the federation would have used that reception to get the girls to reveal all their problems to the First Lady who would quickly resolve their problems and set a workable template which would have prevented a recurrence of such problems in the next eight years.

    NFF missed the biggest opportunity to establish a direct link to the First Lady who would have taken adequate steps to get most of her friends, the public and private sectors to key into the women’s football crusade for the good of the game. The NFF chose to populate the reception with members and their staff, leaving the main actors in their different states.

    A fundraiser spearheaded by the First Lady would have reinvigorated the beautiful game for the girls, especially at the 774 Local Government Areas in the country. The cash realised would have been used to create women’s football leagues and raise awareness among parents to allow the girl-child to play football, using the girls in the Super Falcons as the point of contact for change. Whenever the girls played at the Women’s World Cup Nigerians stayed awake to watch the girls. What the women’s game needs here in Nigeria is a credible face to convince the corporate world to identify their goods and services with the game by way of sponsorship. Pity, NFF has wasted this golden chance.

    Sport is a big deal. It unites nations and enchants people. Besides, it has a global appeal, pulling fans and sponsors in a unique force that impacts positively on businesses and health. These positives can best be evaluated when the government has a template that makes it possible for businesses and philanthropists to key into the nation’s vision for sports.

    Governments of sports-loving nations entice businesses with relief packages, such as tax rebates on their investments in sports. Given sports’ global appeal, governments effectively utilise the platform as their public relations tool to change people’s perceptions of their entities.    Grassroots development can be actualised through the hosting of international and continental sporting events. Most countries use these big competitions to woo the blue-chip industries to identify with sports. Besides, these competitions open up the hinterland with the facilities constructed creating jobs in the locality. The facilities would attract the villagers to learn the games and, inadvertently, improve their health.

    Big sports competitions generate revenue, create jobs, improve financial bases and provide the best opportunity for foreigners to have first-hand interaction with Nigerians. Such competitions improve tourism, a sure money spinner. Need I state the benefit that business concerns will gain from the volume of foreign exchange during such competitions?

    It, therefore, aches to note that we have hosted big competitions in the past and have been unable to convince the corporate world about the gains of such events largely because no government has bothered to ask the organisers what went down and what we gained – this is what economists call Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA). Facilities built for such competitions are rotting away. In some cases, the equipment has been vandalised with nobody made to pay for it.  The exit of one minister sparks off fresh crises from losers in the last administration. That has been the trend. This setting makes it impossible for the corporate world to identify with sports since no one would want to associate its products and services with people who are not credible.

  • NFF’s waste of cash (1)

    NFF’s waste of cash (1)

    Today September 9, 2023, is my 63rd birthday and I thought of reminiscing on the past six decades or more. I also thought of celebrating my big uncle (he will crucify me if I mention his name here) and I also thought about writing a few words about my late mother Dame Abigail Isevbua Ojeikere who shared my birthday with me. My mother would have been 89 years old today. But I’m a very quiet person and I have chosen to write today’s column normally by discussing the barefaced waste of cash by chieftains of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF).

    Why NFF chieftains have religiously stuck to this wasteful venture under the guise of building a very strong Super Eagles falls flat on its face when we either perform woefully at the senior World Cup or miss attending the Mundial as we did in 2022 in Qatar. Each succeeding NFF board always drink from this poisoned chalice. Happily, a new sports minister has assumed office and one hopes he can read this article to see how the NFF members walk into trouble with their eyes wide open.

    For the NFF members, it translates to an act of witchcraft if you dare ask after the wages of any Super Eagles chief coach. When coaching positions become open, those likely for the jobs are with contractual details in the public domain after accepting the job unlike Nigeria’s where monetary details are never disclosed. We only get to know some semblance of how much the coach earns when such a  foreign manager is being owed annual wages running into one year. The secrecy surrounding how such foreigners are recruited leaves room for a lot of suspicion with many instances suggesting a one-man show in the recruiting process.

    In other climes, the recruitment of coaches is done by such a country’s Football Association’s Technical Committee by a process or such a new manager would be headhunted. A ready case in point is England where the incumbent manager Gareth Southgate is slated to quit the job next year. The English soccer chiefs are not leaving the process of replacing  Gareth Southgate to chance or any form of lottery. Rather the English press is awash with stories of the thinking of the FA men on likely replacement for Gareth Southgate.

    According to one of the English tabloids Daily Mail Tuesday: ”FA chiefs are conscious of the uncertainty and taking seriously the possibility that Southgate will saunter into the sunset after next summer’s European Championship in Germany.

    ”There were similar vibes before last year’s World Cup when Eddie Howe, Graham Potter and Mauricio Pochettino were all considered in the event of Southgate standing down. The dream appointment of some at the FA is Pep Guardiola — an option officials are open to exploring.”

    Pray, this is a football body that has thinking members. They have situated the recruitment process to Englishmen who handle clubs in England, the successful ones and those foreigners whose methods suit what they desire for the Three Lions. It isn’t rocket science.

    Honourable Sports Minister, please urge the NFF to tell Nigerians how much Coach Jose Peseiro now that he has accepted a pay cut from $70,000 monthly. It would make no sense for Peseiro’s new wages to be $50,000 which is what he got when he first assumed duties as the Head Coach for the Super Eagles. Indeed, it is a rape on our commonwealth for any group of people to pay Peseiro $50,000 monthly. Honourable minister, NFF needs to tell Nigerians the tenure of this new deal which shouldn’t be too far away from the end of the 2024  Africa Cup of Nations slated to hold Cote d’Ivoire. The shocking revelation that Peseiro $45,000 per month shows that federations aren’t sensitive to the near global recession.

    To pay Peseiro $45,000 is unacceptable for a man who barely spends close to six unbroken weeks in Nigeria. The coach resides in Europe and monitors our players in the foreign legion by watching television which can easily be done by our domestic coaches. Peseiro’s repeated choice of between 23 to 28 foreign-based players is his uncanny way of de-marketing the domestic leagues and their players. Why is there a professional league in this country if its products aren’t good enough to play for Nigeria against a country which our big boys beat by 10 -0? Whispers seem to authenticate the fact that Peseiro’s revised monthly wage is $45,000 from the earlier $70,000.  Ridiculous figures are being bandied without telling how the man’s wages would be paid, although the easiest option would be to use FIFA’s grants. Are the grants meant to pay our coaches or to settle institutional debts? Is this what other countries do with FIFA’s money?

    Honourable sports minister sir, don’t be deceived by NFF’s cheap talk that they have reduced the number of support staff Peseiro can have. Did NFF in justifying why Peseiro should be paid $50,000 initially and $70,000 not say that the Portuguese would be paying his Portuguese assistants from this bogus wage? How does that translate to saving cost after the manager’s wage was reduced except they are being economical with the truth? Indeed, if Peseiro can’t work with his Nigerian assistants, then he should be asked to go.

    One would have thought that NFF’s penchant for recruiting foreign coaches when there is the need for rebuilding the team after any woeful outing is one of the parameters for preparing a Nigerian to take over from such foreigners. If NFF men are serious, Peseiro’s contract shouldn’t be renewed irrespective of what the team achieves at the next Africa Cup of Nations slated to be held in Cote d’Ivoire. If we don’t give our qualified domestic coaches the opportunity to learn on the job whilst prosecuting matches, they would never grow nor would they acquire the desired experience we always aim for in foreign coaches.

    If Peseiro was world-class, Portugal wouldn’t have gone for a foreigner as manager. Peseiro would have been their only choice. NFF showed their lack of vision by giving Peseiro a semi-final target at the Africa Cup of Nations in spite of our armada of stars painting Europe with goals and showcasing breath-taking soccer skills to the admiration of football fans across the globe.

    Honourable minister sir, don’t be carried away by the number of goals the Super Eagles would score against Sao Tome on Sunday, having trounced the visitors 10-0 in the first leg. Instead, sit with the players to tabulate how much they are being owed and for which matches or international competitions. It would be preposterous if the players are being owed any amount for an international friendly match going by its tradition. International friendly matches are either at the behest of the organisers or at the instance of host the nations. There are ways in which monetary rewards are paid to the players as appearance fees. Hotel accommodation fees, feeding, transportation and other logistics are handled by the organisers, most times done by experts in the field.

    Honourable minister, if the NFF owes the Super Eagles, the fault is theirs because the cost of assembling between 23 and 29 players for a game is too heavy and unnecessary since payments are done in hard currency. Only 16 players can participate in a game, so why invite 23 or 29? To do what? The disturbing aspect of this invitational style for players, is that the coaches always insist on having all foreign players. A prudent soccer federation worthy of its onions would insist on having at least nine home-based players.

    What it means is that the cost of ticketing for foreign players would be reduced by half. Equally reduced would be the overhead cost of prosecuting games with 29 players. There is a need to find out how much the state governments which host the Super Eagles contribute. Do they pay for the players’ winning bonuses? Those large sums given to the team’s captain for the players are for what? You tell me.

    Read Also: West Ham fan travels to Ghana to watch Mohammed Kudus

    Today September 9, 2023, is my 63rd birthday and I thought of reminiscing on the past six decades or more. I also thought of celebrating my big uncle (he will crucify me if I mention his name here) and I also thought about writing a few words about my late mother Dame Abigail Isevbua Ojeikere who shared my birthday with me. My mother would have been 89 years old today. But I’m a very quiet person and I have chosen to write today’s column normally by discussing the barefaced waste of cash by chieftains of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF).

    Why NFF chieftains have religiously stuck to this wasteful venture under the guise of building a very strong Super Eagles falls flat on its face when we either perform woefully at the senior World Cup or miss attending the Mundial as we did in 2022 in Qatar. Each succeeding NFF board always drink from this poisoned chalice. Happily, a new sports minister has assumed office and one hopes he can read this article to see how the NFF members walk into trouble with their eyes wide open.

    For the NFF members, it translates to an act of witchcraft if you dare ask after the wages of any Super Eagles chief coach. When coaching positions become open, those likely for the jobs are with contractual details in the public domain after accepting the job unlike Nigeria’s where monetary details are never disclosed. We only get to know some semblance of how much the coach earns when such a  foreign manager is being owed annual wages running into one year. The secrecy surrounding how such foreigners are recruited leaves room for a lot of suspicion with many instances suggesting a one-man show in the recruiting process.

    In other climes, the recruitment of coaches is done by such a country’s Football Association’s Technical Committee by a process or such a new manager would be headhunted. A ready case in point is England where the incumbent manager Gareth Southgate is slated to quit the job next year. The English soccer chiefs are not leaving the process of replacing  Gareth Southgate to chance or any form of lottery. Rather the English press is awash with stories of the thinking of the FA men on likely replacement for Gareth Southgate.

    According to one of the English tabloids Daily Mail Tuesday: ”FA chiefs are conscious of the uncertainty and taking seriously the possibility that Southgate will saunter into the sunset after next summer’s European Championship in Germany.

    ”There were similar vibes before last year’s World Cup when Eddie Howe, Graham Potter and Mauricio Pochettino were all considered in the event of Southgate standing down. The dream appointment of some at the FA is Pep Guardiola — an option officials are open to exploring.”

    Pray, this is a football body that has thinking members. They have situated the recruitment process to Englishmen who handle clubs in England, the successful ones and those foreigners whose methods suit what they desire for the Three Lions. It isn’t rocket science.

    Honourable Sports Minister, please urge the NFF to tell Nigerians how much Coach Jose Peseiro now that he has accepted a pay cut from $70,000 monthly. It would make no sense for Peseiro’s new wages to be $50,000 which is what he got when he first assumed duties as the Head Coach for the Super Eagles. Indeed, it is a rape on our commonwealth for any group of people to pay Peseiro $50,000 monthly. Honourable minister, NFF needs to tell Nigerians the tenure of this new deal which shouldn’t be too far away from the end of the 2024  Africa Cup of Nations slated to hold Cote d’Ivoire. The shocking revelation that Peseiro $45,000 per month shows that federations aren’t sensitive to the near global recession.

    To pay Peseiro $45,000 is unacceptable for a man who barely spends close to six unbroken weeks in Nigeria. The coach resides in Europe and monitors our players in the foreign legion by watching television which can easily be done by our domestic coaches. Peseiro’s repeated choice of between 23 to 28 foreign-based players is his uncanny way of de-marketing the domestic leagues and their players. Why is there a professional league in this country if its products aren’t good enough to play for Nigeria against a country which our big boys beat by 10 -0? Whispers seem to authenticate the fact that Peseiro’s revised monthly wage is $45,000 from the earlier $70,000.  Ridiculous figures are being bandied without telling how the man’s wages would be paid, although the easiest option would be to use FIFA’s grants. Are the grants meant to pay our coaches or to settle institutional debts? Is this what other countries do with FIFA’s money?

    Honourable sports minister sir, don’t be deceived by NFF’s cheap talk that they have reduced the number of support staff Peseiro can have. Did NFF in justifying why Peseiro should be paid $50,000 initially and $70,000 not say that the Portuguese would be paying his Portuguese assistants from this bogus wage? How does that translate to saving cost after the manager’s wage was reduced except they are being economical with the truth? Indeed, if Peseiro can’t work with his Nigerian assistants, then he should be asked to go.

    One would have thought that NFF’s penchant for recruiting foreign coaches when there is the need for rebuilding the team after any woeful outing is one of the parameters for preparing a Nigerian to take over from such foreigners. If NFF men are serious, Peseiro’s contract shouldn’t be renewed irrespective of what the team achieves at the next Africa Cup of Nations slated to be held in Cote d’Ivoire. If we don’t give our qualified domestic coaches the opportunity to learn on the job whilst prosecuting matches, they would never grow nor would they acquire the desired experience we always aim for in foreign coaches.

    If Peseiro was world-class, Portugal wouldn’t have gone for a foreigner as manager. Peseiro would have been their only choice. NFF showed their lack of vision by giving Peseiro a semi-final target at the Africa Cup of Nations in spite of our armada of stars painting Europe with goals and showcasing breath-taking soccer skills to the admiration of football fans across the globe.

    Honourable minister sir, don’t be carried away by the number of goals the Super Eagles would score against Sao Tome on Sunday, having trounced the visitors 10-0 in the first leg. Instead, sit with the players to tabulate how much they are being owed and for which matches or international competitions. It would be preposterous if the players are being owed any amount for an international friendly match going by its tradition. International friendly matches are either at the behest of the organisers or at the instance of host the nations. There are ways in which monetary rewards are paid to the players as appearance fees. Hotel accommodation fees, feeding, transportation and other logistics are handled by the organisers, most times done by experts in the field.

    Honourable minister, if the NFF owes the Super Eagles, the fault is theirs because the cost of assembling between 23 and 29 players for a game is too heavy and unnecessary since payments are done in hard currency. Only 16 players can participate in a game, so why invite 23 or 29? To do what? The disturbing aspect of this invitational style for players, is that the coaches always insist on having all foreign players. A prudent soccer federation worthy of its onions would insist on having at least nine home-based players.

    What it means is that the cost of ticketing for foreign players would be reduced by half. Equally reduced would be the overhead cost of prosecuting games with 29 players. There is a need to find out how much the state governments which host the Super Eagles contribute. Do they pay for the players’ winning bonuses? Those large sums given to the team’s captain for the players are for what? You tell me.

  • Paris Olympics: Before we clap for our opponents

    Paris Olympics: Before we clap for our opponents

    I had wanted to talk about something else today before I saw the photograph of the new Sports Minister, John Enoh, at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport Abuja at 12.08 am physically receiving the country’s ambassadors to the World Athletic Championships held in Budapest. I shouted Eureka! Knowing that the minister wasn’t approaching the tasks of fixing our sports with blindfolded eyes. Enoh should have an interpersonal relationship with our sports ambassadors, especially the medal-winning sportsmen and women. Enoh’s first assignment is the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

    Whereas those countries expected to participate at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games would at the snap of their fingertips tell the world how many gold, silver and bronze medals based on time-tested indices that they have adopted as part of their respective countries’ sports cultures. In Nigeria, it is a guesswork largely because we have sports administrators who are mostly disorganised, with due respect to a few who truly know their onions.

    If Enoh wants to succeed in this job, he needs to see things for himself as they happen and not rely on the claims and/or counterclaims of our sports administrators who have developed a penchant for getting into the different sports federations in the country only to contest elections at the international platforms of such federations. These Nigerian administrators know that membership of international bodies in their different sports guarantees them relevance and a place in the next election even if their sport in the country is literally lying in the morgue.

    They couldn’t be bothered about the routine activities of our athletes, especially the star performers such as Amusan, Ese Brume et al who are already world beaters, whose preparations for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games should be topmost priority till after the multi-sports competition. It didn’t come as a surprise when Amusan was initially suspended from the World Athletics Championships held in Budapest. Instead of Amusan concentrating on her strategies of retaining her 100-metre hurdles title, she busied herself stating why she would come out clean of loading her system with steroids.

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    This tedious expedition for athletes who didn’t take the mandatory three out of competitions; drug tests being cleared looked more like an attempt to climb a greasy pole. Much of the argument to prove her innocence came from Amusan with the federation’s chieftains keeping sealed lips to the consternation of followers of the sport.

    The lesson from this unfortunate incident is that both the athletes and the federation’s members should make it a point of duty to know the rules of their sport. The federations must allow their sub-committees to function. If the AFN has functional medical committee, the members ought to have known those who have undergone the Out of Competition Test (OCT) and those who haven’t. That way, the technical committee would be effectively guided when picking athletes to be invited for trials. The AFN in conjunction with the federation’s medical team ought to have done due diligence on the athletes selected to represent the country to know those eligible and those who aren’t.

    The current AFN board should ensure that these new kids on the block are monitored, retrained, and given the best treatment in terms of their welfare packages, training grants, and those things others do to motivate their fresh kids on the tracks. The next Olympics is in Paris in 2024, meaning that the federation has barely one year to institute programmes that would make the kids winners again at the Olympics in the proverbial city in France, which anyone sees and dies. Good to know that something can come out of Nigeria that is good for the world to celebrate. I cherish listening to Nigeria’s anthem being sung at victory ceremonies. It has always been my best moment outside this country covering sporting events.

    However, the honourable sports minister, winning laurels at big events is a project structured on workable models used by renowned sports polities. Most of these models are anchored on sports institutes that train coaches and sports managers. It also provides systems which are adopted by these countries’ teams during competitions. It is the reason we see certain countries play the same way with a few adjustments informed by how the opposition plays.

    Countries such as Australia, America, Britain and recently Jamaica have models that developing countries like ours can adopt if we genuinely want to make the industry the business that it is in other climes. Our administrators made so much noise about adopting the Australian model after the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. They were particularly fascinated by the feats achieved by the Australians. Several visits were made to Sydney to study the system. Some Australians came here. Our administrators raised hopes that the National Sports Institute (NIS) will be redesigned with the Australian model in mind. It never happened, largely because of the policy summersaults.

    Of course, with a government that pays lip service to corporate sponsorships for sports, the blue-chip firms are not inspired to take the initiative. Even the few sports federations that seek sponsorship from these firms are unconvincing to a prospective sponsor when asked what a sponsoring company stands to gain from such investments. This will even be worse now considering the tightened noose on the economy’s neck a development that has left many firms rethinking their spending portfolio. And for such firms, every kobo for sponsorship must be worth its while for the return-on-investment.

    A blueprint is sacrosanct for sports to thrive and it must be anchored on the desired need to resuscitate moribund grassroots competitions that engage the youths and take them away from the vices in the society.

    The emergence of a sports policy endorsed by the government will create jobs such that this industry could in the next 10 years become the highest employer of labour.

    The policy should challenge local government chairmen to build at least four mini-sports centres that would serve as playgrounds for their constituents in the absence of such structures in the schools in the 774 local government areas.

    The beauty of sporting events is that there are markers to determine the winners quite distinct from the losers. This index rings true with the performance charts of the sporting federations in the country. Those Olympic Games regulars in the past for Nigeria such as boxing should quietly walk away. Those federations where members have served more than two terms should bow out. they cannot offer anything different from what they had exhibited in the last four years.

    The diabolical way in which some people remain in the federations simply because they are members of their international federations is unacceptable. They were able to contest for such positions because Nigeria made them members of her federations where they sought and won elections. Sports cannot be lying prostrate while those who volunteered to revive the industry sit tight in the place on the altar of being international federations’ officials.

    If the athletes aren’t competing for laurels in sports, there can’t be officials. So, if the officials have outlived their usefulness by failing to discover, nurture and expose our athletes to represent Nigeria in big competitions, they should go.

    In other climes, government has incentives for firms that support sports such as tax holidays and/or rebates. Most of our federations are handicapped by the kind of members they have who are mainly self-seekers, craving to get into their federations’ international bodies. It doesn’t matter if the sports they superintend don’t organise one competition in their four-year tenures.

    Are sports truly “play play” as one former governor once described it? Who will challenge us to see sports as a  platform to bolster the country’s revenue? Doesn’t the government know that sports is the best vehicle for massive employment? You tell me.

  • Enoh, watch your back

    Enoh, watch your back

    The Athletic Federation in Nigeria is deep in crisis with the federation’s top shots opting to shut out recalcitrant members who are insisting on doing things the old ways.

    Athletics ought to be a money spinner akin to what occurs in countries where athletics blossoms. At the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games and the World Championship not forgetting the athletics’ Grand Prix competitions where the sportsmen and women used to garner points, the athletics events draw fans from where they are during such competitions to watch the 100 metres race for both men and women.

    The 100-metre races to determine the fastest man and woman in the world dominate the headlines in the media immediately the winners with questions if records were broken or not. Instances were recorded, and followers of the sport asked such questions on the wind gauge. Indeed, until the athlete is subject to rigorous checks, not few purists would reckon with the new records. But in Nigeria, the trouble that has been festering in a hush tone in the past has blown open the AFN with athletes being taken off by their amiable federation president. Perhaps, the new minister of sports Senator John Enoh could call for the AFN President and his members to find an amicable resolution of the crisis for the good of the game.

    It may please the minister to note basketball federation has been torn to shreds by hitherto soul mates much to the consternation of lovers of the dunking game. With the 2024 Olympic Games less than one year away in Paris, it is almost certain that the Nigerian team to the multi-sport tournament would be slim and would be clapping for her opponents rather than being celebrated.

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    Is sports all about funding and administration? Not exactly. Without the athletes and the coaches, no sports events can be held. Athletes and coaches form the fulcrum on which sports thrive.

    One of the best federations in the country is the table tennis federation – easily the federation that has a calendar of activities that keep the kids busy. What is missing in this deluge of competitions is adequate training and retraining of the coaches who teach them. When pitched against better-exposed stars, they start the process of losing games from the way they stand behind the table. Every stroke offered is decoded by the opponents who have taken their time to watch past tapes of their foes, a practice we hardly do here.  No one goes to battle blindfolded, not knowing what to expect. This is the biggest problem with Nigerian athletes. Too much guesswork. No proper grooming.

    Honourable sports minister, sir, if Nigeria must be seen to be a sporting nation, our sports chieftains must start accepting to host major international competitions. The best way to upgrade these facilities here in Nigeria is to host periodic sporting events in the different sports. Our administrators’ penchant for honouring and attending events held outside the country, because it guarantees payment in dollars, should be stopped.

    These administrators must be tasked to take each game to any part of the country with the best comparative advantage to produce the athletes who must then be taught the rudiments of the game at the grassroots. The criteria for picking administrators for each sport should include having a passion for the game. It is only when a person is passionate about a sport that he can appreciate the need to continuously provide new ideas to develop it.

    A blueprint is sacrosanct for sports to thrive and it must be anchored on the dire need to resuscitate moribund grassroots competitions that engage youths, taking them away from the vices of the society.

    The emergence of a sports policy endorsed by the government will create jobs, such that this industry could in the next 10 years become the highest employer of labour.

    The policy should challenge local government chairmen to build at least four mini-sports centres that would serve as playgrounds for their constituents in the absence of such structures in the schools in the 774 local government areas.

    Perhaps we must re-introduce the zonal sports offices in the six geo-political zones and equip them with coaches and office personnel who should be monitored just as the coaches must be retrained. Those who are not productive should be eased out of the system.

    These rebuilding processes would produce an incontrovertible database of the talents discovered. And it would help sports develop since athletes won’t be able to forge ages to play for the junior teams.

    Honourable Sports Minister, let’s allow the private sector to come in to set the tone with entrepreneurial skills, and then it becomes a huge business. Imagine what it means if every week people go into the stadium to enjoy a good match; the impact and effervescent effect on the nation. Consider those who transport the fans, who sell to the fans, produce wares for the fans, produce the tickets, and the telephone companies that would gain from it, especially in this telecommunication age, where if you are in the stadium, you want to tweet it, take pictures and post on the social media, it is all so complex. That is why we are saying that sports are a catalyst to recover from the economic recession that the country is experiencing. But that is if we understand it.

    The talents are here; what we lack is a sports culture that is anchored on a calendar that sports-friendly blue-chip companies can incorporate into their fiscal budgets.

    Our sports facilities must be maintained. Those old ones should be upgraded to provide a platform for local and international competitions for our athletes.

    The minister should ensure that the National Institute for Sports (NIS) performs like its contemporaries elsewhere. It should be upgraded to function as the training ground for our coaches. It should also serve as the brain-box of our sports where policies are implemented.

    Sport is a big deal. It unites nations and enchants people. Besides, it has a global appeal, pulling fans and sponsors into a unique force that impacts positively on businesses and health. These positives can best be evaluated when the government has a template that makes it possible for businesses and philanthropists to key into the nation’s vision for sports.

    Governments of sports-loving nations entice businesses with relief packages, such as tax rebates on their investments in sports. Given sports’ global appeal, governments effectively utilise the platform as their public relations tool to change people’s perceptions of their entities.

    Grassroots development can be actualised through the hosting of international and continental sporting events. Most countries use these big competitions to woo the blue-chip industries to identify with sports. Besides, these competitions open up the hinterland with the facilities constructed creating jobs in the locality. The facilities would attract the villagers to learn the games and, inadvertently, improve their health.

    Big sports competitions generate revenue, create jobs, improve financial bases and provide the best opportunity for foreigners to have first-hand interaction with Nigerians. Such competitions improve tourism, a sure money spinner. Need I state the benefit that business concerns will gain from the volume of foreign exchange during such competitions?

    It, therefore, aches to note that we have hosted big competitions in the past and have been unable to convince the corporate world about the gains of such events largely because no government has bothered to ask the organisers what went down and what we gained – this is what economists call Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA). Facilities built for such competitions are rotting away. In some cases, the equipment has been vandalised with nobody made to pay for it.