Category: Ade Ojeikere

I sat through Lobi Stars’ 1-0 loss to Wydad FC inside the Nnamdi Azikiwe Stadium in Enugu last week with an open mind. I wanted to spot good players in Lobi on who I could challenge Super Eagles’ manager Gernot Rohr when he picks the players for the two matches against Seychelles on March 23 and against Egypt (an international friendly game) on March 26 inside the late Stephen Keshi Stadium in Asaba.

I wanted to see how playing the game under the scorching sun will affect the visitors more than Lobi players, who incidentally were playing outside their state. The ding-dong nature of the game was not surprising because the fans, who usually should be the unseen 12th man on the field were indifferent, preferring to watch the game without showing emotions.

The Benue State Government should carry the can for not providing the facilities for Lobi to feel at home when playing. Let’s not estimate the revenue that the state has lost from these games. Why sponsor a team when you cannot meet all its demands, dear governor? Mr governor, Enugu Rangers are truly at home during their matches because they play their matches on their ground, with their supporters rooting for them, unlike your team.

So, when the match referee signalled for a penalty kick against Lobi, I watched out for the Nigerian players’ reaction to the referee, keeping another eye on the Lobi bench to see if their officials will storm onto the pitch or turn their faces towards the crowd to incite them into protesting. They watched in awe, knowing the implication of any untoward action. The Nigerians’ reaction to the second penalty decision, even though the kick was lost, wasn’t different from the first. It showed that they knew the rules and accepted their fate with equanimity.

Two penalty kicks awarded against Lobi, and no one went close to the referee to protest? If the referee had done that to any of our NPFL teams, he will be recuperating in the hospital now, with the game postponed until the referees’ reports come. Yet, at the continental platform, these same irritants obey the laws. Why? They know that NPFL organisers are toothless; easily compromised. What a country.

Ironically, Wydad players tried to roughen the referee, who didn’t take any action, knowing that such tantrums will be in his report to CAF. The live telecast of the game compels the match officials to report everything to be in sync with what is the recorded match tapes. Those Wydad players who tried to bully the referee will be punished in the next three weeks. If the referee doesn’t note the incidents, the match commissioner and independent assessor must include them in their reports because it forms part of the duties in the game. Please, don’t ask me what happens in the Nigerian situation.

My thoughts ran wild when I tried to imagine what would have befallen the referee for having the temerity to award two penalty kicks against the home team, with one of the resultant kicks deciding the match. In my agitated state, one reckoned that the game would have ended with the second penalty awarded. Perhaps, the referee wouldn’t have had the gut to sound the whistle for the second penalty, having been bathed with sachets of pure water and pelted with stones from the stands.

The referee would have been kicked around the pitch. He would run into the mob which would have scaled the perimeter fence in the stadium to unleash mayhem. Since there is no effective video coverage, more so when the home team’s recording becomes the only document, it is easy for thugs go berserk. Of course, the visiting team’s video recording is the first document the urchins destroy, knowing that theirs will be doctored to exclude the troubling scenes.

With such distorted document, justice can’t be dispensed. It will shock many readers to hear that some battered referees don’t report such battery in their reports, having been settled. But with recorded video from live telecasts of games, the referees won’t lie on tape, like the say in law. The organisers should get the game back on television, even if it means getting state government owned stations and the private ones to beam games within their locality to cut costs. The benefits of beaming matches live are overwhelming.

One wonders what the organisers show to prospecting firms willing to do business with them? Would it not have been better showing them recorded programmes of the league to appreciate what they stand to gain in a partnership? Will firms be excited to associate their brands with the game when the benefits of such unions are not documented? I’m sure the organisers dare not show games where referees are battered. They also won’t show videos of crowd violence with fans running through teargas.

No fan will dare beat up a referee or cause a breach of public peace, when he knows that the game is live on television and he could easily be spotted by the law enforcement agencies. Match officials will be empowered to interpret the rules of the game when they know that their safety is guaranteed. They also won’t want to misbehave.

If you watch the European leagues, you will notice that the boards within the inner perimeters of the match venues run advertorials of firms which support the game for both the clubs and the organisers. The mileage from such sponsorships is better imagined than illustrated here. A lot of commercial activities go on around the stadium before, during and after games, which invariably improve the finances of the clubs and the organisers.

The organisers need to do a lot to improve the game. They must pay attention to details, such as the grass on the pitches and the quality of equipment used by officials. It was a disgraceful citation for the domestic league watching one of the assistant referees in the game between Heartland FC of Owerri and Kada FC of Kaduna inside the Okigwe Stadium using cardboard paper instead of an electronic gadget to do the substitution of players.

The crowd at the Okigwe stadium was unprecedented but the ugly scenes of watching the reserve referee lifting the cardboard to indicate the need for a change of player on either side,  instead of an electronic board, with every substitution, was quite disgusting for a country that has participated in six senior World Cup competitions, since her debut at the USA’94 World Cup. It was laughable watching the reserve referee hurrying to clean off the number of one player replaced for the other. It wasted precious time. How much is the electronic gadget? Can’t the organisers buy these gadgets and give to the state football federations to use during matches?

The myriad of unpleasant stories from the league venues are shameful, especially the ones in which the visiting teams are stopped from training on the match turf, a day before the game. I wonder the type of training the officials get from the NPFL, if what is due the visiting teams are taken from them through sinister methods. The NPFL chiefs should school the state football chieftains on the rules of the game. Visiting teams must train at the match venue 24 hours before the game. They are also allowed to train in the morning of the game. This untoward method of making the visitors play on the pitch on match days only is condemnable. It is just a game, not warfare, more so when the hosts today will be visitors in the next game.

If the league had been effectively run, the pool of players for our national teams would have been easy to assemble, since they will be picked based on their performance during matches. Most of our top stars in the past were selected from the domestic competitions. After all, 80 per cent of the players Clemens Westerhof used to make Nigeria great were from the league centres across the country. It is on record that George Finidi played for Calabar Rovers one weekend only to star for Ajax Amsterdam FC of Holland the next week in the Dutch league.

Domestic league players Westerhof used for the Eagles’ matches were known faces based on their performances. The late Stephen Keshi, the late Rashidi Yekini, the late Uche Okafor, Uche Okechukwu, Daniel Amokachi, Friday Elaho, Samson Siasia, Peter Rufai, Austin Eguavoen, Ben Iroha, Edema Fuludu et al didn’t start playing for Nigeria as foreign-based.

We had a league which identified good players, who were rewarded. All that is gone because our organisers are interested in being members of FIFA, CAF etc committees with the game dying here. It suits some of the league organisers to be match commissioners in the finals of one CAF’s inter-club matches than having a Nigerian side play in such events.

The last time a Nigeria side, Dolphins FC of Port Harcourt, played in any of CAF’s inter-club finals was in 2005 against FAR of Morocco. Dolphin won at home 1-0 and lost the second leg 3-0. Fourteen years after, NPFL chieftains are unperturbed. They would rather be outside this country than remain here to monitor how our teams are faring in the continent. Segun Odegbami, the late Muda Lawal, Adokie Amiesimaka, Christian Chukwu, Kadiri Ikhana, Bright Omokaro, Humphrey Edobor, Jossy Dombraye, the late Haruna Ilerika et al were worthy ambassadors of the league at the continental level.

If our big boys are not doing well in Europe through regular team appearances, the local league chaps can suffice by ruling Africa, given their talents. Nigerian clubs should win continental trophies like the North Africans, if our organisers implement half of what they are exposed to by FIFA and CAF competitions. If they lack ideas, they can quit the office honourably.

The Nigeria Premier League can best be described as a league of violence. Even then, must we wait until a referee is killed-God forbid- before making radical changes to rein in the agents of violence?

When a referee is killed, we will constitute panels to find out how the referee was killed, who did, why and how. Innocent souls will be arrested while the roughnecks will be walking the streets, free as air, with instructions from their principals not be seen around any stadium. Of course, the noise over the dastardly act won’t last long; it will be buried with the victim whose family will be left to bear the burden of losing their loved one.

Nothing seems to be new dawn because the same characters run the competition yearly. Those who run the domestic game have the penchant for signing MOUs. They enjoy listening to themselves. Those with dissenting views don’t know what it takes to run the game. But this writer won’t give up until the right personnel are put in place.

The first thing that stadia where games are played need urgently are effective CCTVs which can’t destroyed to cover up malpractices. Besides, any stadium that is slated to host games must build special exit gates that will make it absolutely impossible to access the referees before, during and after matches. Any harm inflicted on match referees will translate to 10 points deduction from the offender’s total. Such a defaulting club should never be allowed to play in that venue for one year.

With a live coverage of the domestic league, it will be easier to identify where a problem began. Those running the league met an existing television right sponsor and a title owner of the league. What happened to these two bodies which funded the operations of the organising body?

Referees should be encouraged to sue clubs which send touts to beat them. They should get justice, no matter the cost. The referees’ body should secure lawyers for them and refuse to discontinue such cases, no matter whose ox is gored. This idea of only asking clubs to pay assaulted referees’ hospital bills is not enough to save referees from violence.

For any venture to attract good funding, it should be packaged to look attractive. But with the spate of violence at venues, nobody will do sports business with the league until hoodlums are chased away from the stadia. The carnage at the stadium may dissuade spectators from watching games. Nobody will bring his family to the stadium only to scamper out of the place as violence breaks out.

I don’t subscribe to the view that we should introduce soldiers at match venues. They are no battle fronts. Stewards and those associated with keeping the stadium peaceful should be made to do their jobs; negligent ones should be axed. Many jobless Nigerians will be happy to land this kind of job. What happened at the Sagamu Stadium last week Saturday after Bendel Insurance FC of Benin City held Remo Stars 1-1, where the match referees were beaten, would have been avoided or the culprits caught, if some of the aforementioned suggestions were in place. The centre referee’s head needed stitches to the cuts sustained from objects used on it.

It isn’t enough for the LMC to reel out sanctions against defaulting clubs. The body should involve the police in punishing offenders since their actions are capable of causing a breach of public peace, which is an offence under the penal code.

Part of the LMC’s sanctions reads: ‘’The club has been fined N1m each for failure to ensure restriction of access to unauthorised persons, encroachment immediately after the match, throwing of objects towards the field of play, failure to provide adequate security for match officials, conduct capable of bringing the league to disrepute and compensation to the match officials.

‘’Remo Stars has been ordered to ensure that ‘measures are immediately put in place to forestall future similar occurrence (including but not limited to an approved revised security plan, seminar/programme for supporters, issuance of seat-numbered tickets, etc.)”.

‘’The club has also been directed to within seven days ensure the apprehension and prosecution by the relevant security agencies of the persons identified as Akintan Yinka and ‘Zico’ who were reported to have led the assault on the Match Officials, as well as other persons who participated in the assault on Match Officials; upon failure of which a fine of N25,000.00 (Twenty Five Thousand Naira only) per day shall accrue, until such time as the culprits are apprehended and charged to court.’’

We need to ask the LMC what sanctions were meted out to the Ogun State FA chieftains, especially the chairman and the General Secretary whose duty it is to ensure that games are played without problems? Are they not the ones to whom the referees and other match officials report when they arrive in the state? Is the LMC saying match officials aren’t the guests of the FAs?

State governments, through the FAs, are the owners of the stadium. It is, therefore, their responsibility to effectively police the stadium before, during and after matches. The state FA officials should be in charge of taking the officials to and out of the stadium, with maximum protection by armed security personnel, given the spate of malicious attacks on innocent referees. It isn’t the job of fans to interpret the rules of the game; that is the referees’ duty, having been trained and retrained by  FIFA ‘s referees committee.

The best way to restrict match officials from having contact with teams and their officials is for the State FA chairman to handle everything pertaining to their stay in the town. This way, we will know who to hold when they are attacked. It shouldn’t be the duty of the clubs to house, feed and transport referees to and from the stadia. referees’ movement shouldn’t be dictated by the clubs. Little wonder those who bring them to the stadium are not always around to rescue them when criminals pounce on them.

Joy at last for Moses

The clock was ticking faster than as expected by former Super Eagles pearl Victor Moses. He has the right to decide his career path. But what was apparent in Moses’ self-inflicted transfer saga since the window opened on January 3 was that he didn’t have a career manager, which is a sad commentary, given the level he was until he lost his place to Chelsea’s manager Sarri’s convulsive playing style which has brought weekly pains to many a Blues’ fan.

Moses’ unfortunate fate in the transfer market is the story of most Nigerian players, who will rather handle their career than to employ experts. Career experts are connected with many clubs, such that if options 1,2 and even 3 fail, they can still fix the player a where he can play weekly – even if it means going there on loan till the end of the season, as in this instance.

The beauty of having career manager is that the player can sack him, if he falters in his duties. Indeed, most professional players (other sports inclusive) have teams of experts across all spheres of human endeavour to ensure that their clients are not left stranded for any reason. They are the ones who pull certain stunts in players’ growth to boost players’ growth in the game, not because they will benefit from such packages but to underline the fact that they know their onions.

Back to Victor Moses. The star who joined Fenerbahce FC of Turkey Wednesday night on a five months loan deal needs to be told that most big European clubs prefer national team players to those languishing on the bench weekly or, like in his case, permanently at home watching matches. Moses should know that age isn’t his friend anymore, hence he needs to relax his demands on clubs, irrespective of the fact that he will be joining them from a bigger club, Chelsea.

When Moses announced his retirement from Nigeria’s matches to face Chelsea’s, not few a felt that he had shot himself in the foot and he was about making the same mistake with the offers he was getting from troubled teams seeking to reinforce their squads with his sublime skills.

On Sunday, the news broke that Moses was demanding 200,000 Euros (approximately N81.2 million) from Turkish side Fenerbahce FC, if he succeeds in propelling the team out of the murky relegation waters. Besides, Moses asked the Turkey team to pay him some compensation, if it is relegated since such a fate would have tarnished his image, having not played for any relegated side since he hit Europe as a kid.

Had Moses a manager, he would have known that players take pay cuts to exit a club, especially those who have a point to prove. Moses should  always take the best option on the table. He should quickly return to the Super Eagles and be seen as an international player, which is the best criterion to get juicy contracts abroad. A sterling performance for Nigeria in Egypt at the Africa Cup of Nations raises his chances of a big contract thereafter. Now that Moses has joined Fenerbahce, he must not overrate himself, even if he becomes the club’s match winner. He should know that the deal with Fenerbahce is for five months. The bigger challenge will be how to exit Chelsea, which won’t be easy, except he impresses Fenerbahce to buyout his Chelsea contract. Moses could, however, be lucky if Chelsea sacks Maurisco Sarri, whose stay with the team appears to be in tatters, especially after lampooning his players publicly in a post-match session last Saturday.

Domestic league watchers had something to cheer last weekend when premier league clubs hit the pitches to play the game that binds Nigerians together, irrespective of religion or tribe. Fans ignored the fact that the local league has no sponsor; they stormed the stadia to let off steam, after a seven-month hiatus.

Everyone yearned for good games at match venues. Not many reckoned that any of the first week matches will result in any fracas, such as beating the match officials to pulp. It, therefore, came as a shocker when the media splashed stories of Jos fans beating the centre referee groggy for a game in which the home side, Plateau United, ended it on a barren note against visiting FC Ifeanyi Ubah from Anambra State last weekend. In fact, a journalist was fingered to be the ring leader in the mayhem, according to the referee.

Most soccer faithful couldn’t understand why the fans went berserk on the first day of the season, with many games left. What would have happened to the centre referee had Plateau United lost at home? Unimaginable.

Another league opener involving FC Ifeanyi Ubah ended in a sad tale for the centre referee two years ago. Purists pointed at the January 14, 2017 league opener between Kano Pillars and the Anambra-based side which ended in chaos, after the match arbiter disallowed a free-kick goal on grounds that the first 45 minutes had ended, with the bigwigs of the League Management Board present at the stadium.

Sadly, according to these few, the offending club was given a slap on the wrist. Isn’t this why these unsportsmanlike conducts are prevalent at league venues? Had the organisers ensured that those punished served their terms out, we would have had fewer incidents.

However, it is wrong for club owners to be involved in the running of the league as administrators, an act which makes some club chairmen dictate what should happen in the competition. Asking club owners to be part of the body running the competition amounts to being judges in their own matter. We have had incidents where club owners incited homes fans to cause mayhem and disappear when things get out of hand.

Carnage won’t stop at match venues, if club chairmen don’t ensure that there is security before, during and after matches. It smacks of leadership failure, if match officials are beaten up and nobody is held responsible for such savagery. Where were those who brought them to the stadium when they were attacked? Couldn’t they rescue them from those beasts? Are they saying that those criminals, yes criminals, who pummelled the officials are spirits?

Club chairmen should be arrested anytime match officials are beaten up. They should be held until they can produce the hoodlums, who must be prosecuted to deter others. Clubs should have known operatives assigned solely to ensure that nothing happens to the referees. Where they falter, they, along with the chairmen, should be held responsible. We shouldn’t wait until referees die from injuries sustained from criminals’ action  against them before taking tough actions.

This writer, as a member of the defunct Interim League Management Board (ILMB), queried the idea of having 50 security operatives to work inside the stadium with over 10,000 spectators; they are inadequate. Officials at match venues should be special corps for that purpose, with the task of protecting the stadium, starting from about 500 metres from the gates.

Anyone caught inciting fans over referees’ decisions should immediately be whisked away from the stadium by the police. To show some level of seriousness, it won’t be a bad idea if the security operatives storm the stadium with Black Maria to keep instigators of violence from the stands. If the fans know that they are being watched, they will behave well.

Asking clubs to play behind closed doors is laughable, especially as nobody ensures that such sanctions are enforced. Stiffer punishments, such as banning offenders for a full season, should deter any erring club and its supporters.

Equally unacceptable is the LMC’s decision to banish Plateau United to Ilorin for three matches? What is that? Is it an interim measure? Stiffer sanctions such as banishing offending clubs for the whole season, will send the message to others to be of good conduct. Long banishment implies that the offending clubs’ managements will be compelled to spend more since all their matches are away fixtures. It also means that they won’t be able to generate enough revenue from the gate since the fans in their ‘’strange’’ home may not be favourably disposed to watch their matches like their faithful will do.

Besides, most of these operatives are natives of the area and supporters of the home clubs, who share some of the sentimental views that fuelled the referees’ battery, as in the Jos incident last week. It is good that the referee identified his assailant. The LMC should ensure he faces the wrath of the law. He must be fished out and punished. Isn’t it funny that such a beast has gone into hiding? A coward who should face the music.

Indeed, the league managers should ensure that referees punished the previous season for poor officiating are not absorbed the following season. League followers have faulted the presence this season of certain referees, who were sanctioned last year. The LMC, in conjunction with the Nigeria Referees Association (NRA) should plead with the referees to be fair to all the parties, but this can only be achieved if their safety before, during and after matches is guaranteed.

The best form of security is the referee. But the referee must have the right environment to interpret the laws of the game appropriately. A situation where referees have to meander through a route where irate fans could easily descend on them is condemnable.

Indeed, the stadium designs expose referees, players, and coaches to assaults by irate fans. Sadly, match commissioners who should insist on clearing fans within the inner perimeters of stadia look the other way.

Police come in here. They shouldn’t wait until deaths are recorded at match venues before raising a unit to adequately secure match venues across the country.

I’m not surprised that roughnecks have seized match venues, largely because most of the match commissioners are weak. They don’t have the character to assert their authority before, during and after matches. They are too friendly with club officials. They close their eyes to certain laxities in the security arrangement. Otherwise, how have these mayhems gone on without the hoodlums being caught inside the stadia?

Perhaps, this is the time to ask the Inspector General of Police whose duty it is to ensure adequate security in any gathering. How come the police are disinterested in securing our match venues, knowing that football is an emotional game over which some criminals can take the laws into their hands?

Dear Inspector General of Police, thugs, roughnecks and urchins storm the stadium with raised chests, warning that they are around and not scared to repeat the mayhem. This impunity won’t occur if security operatives whisk them away for punishment. Others will behave properly. The IGP should, as matter of urgency, ask his units in the states where matches are played to immediately storm these venues before a referee is killed simply because some fans are unhappy with a match rule. Teams which suffer from such unruly behaviour return home to await their hosts in the second leg game.

Sadly, the league chiefs are poor students of history. Otherwise, venues that are notorious for violence ought to have been locked up or matches held there shown live on television. With matches shown live, it will be much easier to spot these criminals and their acolytes from replays after the violence.

Such stadia should be locked for one year as the rules provide for. The club should be denied revenue from its home games – one of the consequences of being banned. A club that plays over 28 matches outside its home will definitely be better behaved after serving the ban. Such clubs’ managements must source for cash to travel, feed, accommodate their players and provide other logistics. The burden of such expenses would compel clubs owners to be orderly.

 

Clap for Governor Obaseki

 

Edo State Governor Godwin Obaseki is truly his brother’s keeper. Obaseki played the big brother role on Tuesday in Benin City when he seized the opportunity of the Sports Minister Solomon Dalung’s inspection of facilities ahead of the 2020 National Sports Festival to settle the seeming ‘war’ between the Sports ministry and the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) headed by Amaju Pinnick.

Dalung and Pinnick enjoy a good relationship with the governor. It was appropriate for the governor to call his younger friends to a meeting in the interest of the game.

Tuesday’s meeting shocked those who queued behind the two men to stoke the fire of rift. Now that the fire has been extinguished, it is important that Dalung and Pinnick keep to the agreement. Nigeria is bigger than Dalung and Pinnick. Each of them should complement the other.

However, when one party feels that the other is fraudulent, it is important to call in the EFCC and the ICPC. The supervisory party should learn to trust the EFCC and ICPC officials to do their jobs, since investigations are painstakingly conducted.

The minister does the industry no good in its quest to be self-financing when he repeatedly labels a party as being corrupt even before he is investigated. It is simply an abuse of office, aside the fact that it discourages investors from keying into the sports industry, which thrives elsewhere but Nigeria.

Dalung, please sheathe your sword for the good of the game.

My heart bled when the Confederation of Africa Football (CAF) didn’t consider Nigeria as one of the likely hosts of the continent’s biggest soccer showpiece after taking the hosting rights from Cameroon. The citizenry would have gained a lot from hosting the fiesta -the hospitality business, aviation facilities and influx of foreign currencies to raise the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Hosting the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations would have been a commercial success for Nigeria, given President Muhammadu Buhari’s penchant for probity. The average income per capital per head of the Nigerian would have risen. The citizens’ purchasing power would have increased. The envisaged volume of cash and investment with hosting the Africa Cup of Nations for the Nigerian government would have been unquantifiable.

The aggregate activities from the time the country is announced as host will reengineer our economy. Imagine the presence of 24 African countries’ teams and their teeming supporters here. Imagine the international focus on the country from January 9 till mid-July? Imagine the large movement of people into the country to do Reece jobs ahead of the competition? Imagine people coming to the country weeks before the competition to visit some of the places; this would have highlighted our bid and, in turn, triggered their fancies?

Since 1980, we have hosted the Africa Cup of Nations twice, the last being the co-hosting of the competition with Ghana in 2000. We hosted the FIFA U-20 World Cup in 1999, which Spain won by beating Japan 2-0. Nigeria is one of the biggest sporting nations, at least in Africa. Not to be considered for hosting such a competition by default says a lot about the calibre of people at the helm of sports here.

It is a travesty that the National Stadium in Surulere, Lagos, which has hosted many major sporting events, is derelict. Sportscity hosted the All Africa Games in 1973. Recent heads of the sports ministry have paid lip service to revamping the facility. Politics has scuttled moves to acquire the SportsCity, especially by the Lagos State Government under Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, which sought to lease the place over a period. It is close to one year since the Lagos move, yet Sportscity remains an eyesore and a terrible citation on the way we allow edifices decay, as if we didn’t spend a fortune to build them.

We hosted the All Africa Games in 2003, using the competition to modernise our sporting facilities, which are now rustic due to poor vision of our sports administrators. If we had a maintenance culture, CAF would have asked us to host the competition, given our passion for football, our players’ exploits and the population to fill all the stadia during matches.

World Cup winning Golden Eaglets goalkeeper Emmanuel Babayaro told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos that the sports sector held huge potentialities for Nigerians, if given priority.

“The talk about the diversification of our economy is usually about agriculture and crude oil all the time; meanwhile, the main sector that would have liberated this country long ago, that is a certainty, is sports, especially football. It is amazing that countries like the UK, Spain, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and the rest, depend to some extent on football, to develop their countries.

“Over the past five years, the business of sports has become a ý£20 billion-a-year industry in the UK, supporting some 450,000 jobs; that means that it contributes more to their economy than agriculture and oil com bined. Nigeria is not doing same. We keep paying lip service to football, everything is being politicised.”

The Buhari administration should in the next dispensation appoint a sports minister who will see the bigger picture of marketing Nigeria through the prism of sports and not one who will turn the industry into a battlefield for needless supremacy.

A few Nigerians will feel that hosting the Africa Cup of Nations would be another avenue for enriching new ‘’thieves’’. This is debatable, since the choice of officials to drive the competition’s operations will be different. I will rather use the Russian example as the right way to look at things, irrespective of what happened in the past.

Russia was rustic in sports development. The people were enmeshed in drug trouble, necessitating long term bans on those caught doping. The Mundial in 2018 gave the country the platform to right some of the wrongs of a shameful doping past, and the Russian government achieved that with the successful Mundial which changed the country’s narrative to outsiders.

For Russia, hosting the Mundial without any serious crisis was a bonus. Getting Russians to key into the dynamics of hosting such a big sporting competition underscored why there weren’t too many untoward acts during the events held in 11 cities, every one of them having a historical story to tell about the polity. Russia can now boast of over 14 state-of-the-art stadia which should provide fresh initiatives that will improve their game. Russians can also dream of bigger things at the next Mundial in Qatar.

Nigeria couldn’t be contacted by CAF because our facilities are in ruins. The Sports ministry would rather than rebuild them run after NFF chieftains for alleged graft as if EFCC and ICPC are not competent enough to handle that. The only good stadium is the Nest of Champions in Uyo, which also has problems with its pitch, raising the question why owners of this facility didn’t sign a maintenance agreement with the builders. The pitch of the late Stephen Keshi Stadium in Asaba is not good enough. Renovated Enyimba Stadium in Aba has astro-turf (forget about the jargon of its nearness to grass), it isn’t a grass turf.

Had CAF considered Nigeria to bid for the 2019 AFCON hosting rights like it did to Egypt and South Africa, the Lagos State government could have hastened up the rebuilding of Onikan Stadium. Another missed chance for sports development in the country, not forgetting the ongoing works at the Samuel Osaigbovo Ogbemudia Stadium in Benin City. Did you ask after the Liberty Stadium Ibadan? Do our sports ministry people know that such a facility exists. What a country!

It smacks of leadership failure on the part of the ministry to have hosted the National Sports Festival inside the Abuja National Stadium on tattered tartan tracks, with the pitch in a horrible condition. How much will it cost to fix the grass on the pitch? Don’t tell me N60 million, please.

How would anyone ask for N60 million to plant grass on the Abuja National Stadium’s pitch? Isn’t this the reason the place is decaying? Do we not have horticulturists to do the job? Don’t they know that horticulturists nurture grass before planting? After all, grass is everywhere in the country. Must we always siphon cash for every job? Why would the ministry demand N60 million from NFF to plant grass, yet they are talking about probity? If the ministry don’t know what to do with the place, they should lease it out and see how it will be a befitting edifice under a proper management.

 2018 CAF Awards

 So much has been said about the exclusion of Nigerian stars in the 2018 CAF Awards. Most of the complaints have been sentimental. What these critics didn’t consider is that these awards have a lifespan of 12 months and our players have been making cameo appearances for their European clubs.

For instance, it shouldn’t come as a surprise in 2020, if Mohammed Salah is adjudged the best Africa player. Salah’s performance so far for Liverpool and Egypt has been awesome. He has scored 13 goals for the Merseyside club in the very competitive Barclays English FA Cup. If Liverpool wins the EPL title this season, with Salah still scoring goals, it will be difficult not to hand him the award next year.

I won’t blame those Nigerians with voting rights for not looking in our players’ direction. Such a privilege was given to them on trust and because they are legends of the game.

With Egypt now hosting the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations, it will be expected that the Pharaohs will lift the diadem, since the North African side is a major football country. Pharaohs have not lost a game at home in a very long time. This makes them favourites to win the trophy. But football is a funny game. Can the Super Eagles seize the unpredictable nature of the game to lift the trophy by beating the Egyptians? Tall order but achievable.

Our players must improve on their games. This idea of reporting late to their European clubs after Nigeria’s matches under the guise of visiting their sick relations smacks of indiscipline. The agreement struck between the clubs and NFF is to play our matches, not to visit their loved ones. The fact that NFF and the team’s coaches condone lateness to the Eagles’ camp doesn’t make it right. European clubs see football as a business. They won’t hesitate to drop badly behaved players, especially latecomers.

For this season, Samuel Kalu, Samuel Chukwueze, Wilfred Ndidi and Alex Iwobi are our best bets to challenge Salah for the 2019 award, but beating the Egyptian amounts to trying to fetch water with a basket – impossible.