I have tremendous respect for Victor Nosa Ikpeba. He is one of the ex-internationals who have not reduced their self-esteem by running errands for people who struggled to touch and take autographs from them in their playing days; the larger majority of who have driven our football into the ditch. It hurts deeply listening to a product from street football run the rule so devastatingly over the domestic game, hiding behind one finger, forgetting that the word best is subjective.
Nigeria needs a manager with Clemens Westerhoff’s drive for unsung but talented players who will be excited to live in the country to truly scout for talents. How can anyone rationalise that Nigeria with a population of over 205 million people can’t produce a football team of 22 good players with sublime skills to thrill the world? This can’t be correct talk.
This is the difference. Westerhoff scouted Finidi George, Daniel Amokachi, Uche Okechukwu, Friday Elaho, Ben Iroha et al and took them to clubs in Europe to sharpen the rustic edges of their games. Nigeria thereafter went to thrill the world at the USA ’94 World Cup, qualifying for the Round of 16 stage.
It hurts deeply that a product of grassroots soccer and a sponsor of local competitions has restricted the hunt for talented players in Nigeria to only our domestic league games. One would be unfair to remind Ikpeba about the exploits of players who rose to stardom using the YSFON platform. Need I list their names? Have we forgotten players such as the late Haruna Ilerika, the late Thompson Usiyen, Tunde Balogun, Adokie Amiesimaka, Felix Owolabi, Daimen Ogunsuyi, Quicksilver Slyvanus Okpala, Henry Nwosu, Austin Okocha, Patrick Ekeji, Edema Fuludu, Davidson Owumi, Clement Temile, Austin Eguavoen, Friday Elahor, Etim Esin, Adeolu Adekola, Kanu Nwankwo, Wilson Oruma, Jonathan Akpoborie et al who used the school boys’ competitions of yore, such as the Principal’s Cup and the once famous National Sports Festivals to exhibit their talent without necessarily playing in the local leagues before they attained national and international acclaim? It is the myopia of our soccer chieftains and those that they pick to perform scouting roles that have collectively converted the Super Eagles to the seeming exclusive abode of our Diaspora boys. No disrespect for all that they have done to paper the systemic problem with our football.
How would these ex-internationals honestly feel sitting in the stadium or inside their houses watching Nigeria’s U-17 team, the Golden Eaglets, filled with Diaspora kids under the guise of fielding the best at all times? The pain in this type of setting hits us like a thunderbolt when we watch these kids moping when the Nigerian anthem is being sung before kickoff of games. Shouldn’t the best be scouted from outside of the domestic league? The truth is that those who should protect the domestic game are either agents of scouts of foreign clubs or their shylock managers.
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This blanket pursuit for the best for our national teams wherever they exist is so brazen that today in the Nigerian transfer system, academies and nurseries now enjoy transfer fees in hard currencies instead of stipends tagged developmental fees for discovering and nurturing them.
In fact, a very popular former Deputy Governor was aghast when in taking stock of players rightfully owned by the state’s team, it was discovered that most of them belonged to other people under spurious titles. He immediately ordered for a proper investigation of the matter with the misnomer stopped forthwith. He also directed the police to take some club officials away to write statements on all that they knew about the issue. How could the club be paying players whose transfer fees belonged to different people aptly tagged bystanders? Monkey dey work, baboon dey chop, nobi so? No chance.
Trumpeters of the distasteful slogan of retaining a bronze medal coach should stop thinking through their respective pocket because history never forgets. When our domestic coaches won the AFCON bronze medals, we didn’t waste time in throwing them under the bus. We clamoured for the best coaches, which we zeroed down to recruiting foreign managers. Dear Ikpeba, if you are rooting for the best players in the Super Eagles, you need to be reminded that we also need the best managers, who from the last eight years, have been foreign managers. Truth be told, my brother, Ikpeba, Eric Chelle shouldn’t be the best foreign manager that we can offer to train the best boys to glory.
Otherwise, how do we explain the refusal to renew the contract of a coach who led us to the runners up position with the silver medal at AFCON last year and the massive clamour to retain the services of a coach who needed the bravery of goalkeeper Stanley Nwabali to berth a bronze medal at the Africa Cup of Nations, barely a year after?
Are we moving forward with this type of judgment? Of course not. It is just that those who brought the coaches have pressed the right chords in the media to drum up the maddening noise of retaining a coach without a plan B when his team is boxed off as we saw when Nigeria tottered against the Atlas Lions of Morocco and the Pharaohs of Egypt.
When I hear and read comments about how the past of Nigerian football is better than today’s, I cringe; because it took us 38 years of waiting and torture from North Africans and Cameroonian teams before Enyimba won the CAF Champions League title for Nigeria back to back in 2003 and 2004, making them the first Nigerian club to achieve this feat.
The Nigeria league of yore was inscrutable, filled with tragic incidents, such as the death of former Bendel Insurance FC of Benin City’s chairman, Major Jimoh Ojo (Retired). Or have we forgotten the killing of NIGERIA junior international Igeniwari George, Finidi’s youngest brother inside his club, Enugu Rangers FC’s bus as they drove into the Liberty Stadium Ibadan to honour a National Challenge Cup game against Stationery Stores FC of Lagos? Was it not also in those days that fans frequently ran home because of canisters of tears used to disperse irate fans who took the laws in their hands?
Was is not also in those days that fans died after another Challenge Cup game between Bendel Insurance FC and IICC Shooting Stars FC of Ibadan at the National Stadium, Lagos due to power failure after the tie? What was so good about the local leagues whose matches were won at the board room from spurious post match protests? The Shenanigans in our football in the past were despicable. Those were the locust years of our soccer. So, when people reference it, I’m always shocked to the bones.
For our soccer to grow in leaps and bounds, we must recruit top-rated managers reminiscence of what England did by employing Tomas Tuchel, a German on an 18 months contract and what Brazil did by employing Carlo Ancelotti, an Italian, to guide them through their matches at the forthcoming 2026 World Cup to be co-hosted by Mexico, Canada and the United States (US).
We must prevent those agents and shylock scouts who have pigeonholed our national teams by picking their ‘best’ players, not ours, from being part of Nigeria’s new quest for excellence.
