Desperate times in Nigerian sports
Few years back, Nigeria dominated the continent in sports like athletics, boxing, weight-lifting, wrestling, table-tennis and football. Then names like Innoncent Egbunike, Mary Onyali-Omagbemi, Falilat Ogunkoya, The Ezenwa brothers, Jeremiah Okorodudu, Atanda Musa, Yusuf Ali, late Sunday Bada, Rashidi Yekini, Kanu Nwankwo, Austin Jay-Jay Okocha, Emmanuel Amunike, Dan Amokachi and others too numerous to mention […]
Few years back, Nigeria dominated the continent in sports like athletics, boxing, weight-lifting, wrestling, table-tennis and football. Then names like Innoncent Egbunike, Mary Onyali-Omagbemi, Falilat Ogunkoya, The Ezenwa brothers, Jeremiah Okorodudu, Atanda Musa, Yusuf Ali, late Sunday Bada, Rashidi Yekini, Kanu Nwankwo, Austin Jay-Jay Okocha, Emmanuel Amunike, Dan Amokachi and others too numerous to mention sent shivers down the spines of opponents.
However, there was a sudden change in fortune beginning from the late 90’s but nobody took note of the downward trend. This was when Nigerian sports administrators began to feather their nests to the detriment of the sports and athletes they were supposed to administer. Selection of athletes also became a thing of tribalism and nepotism.
To make matters worse, there was a baseless shift in concentration on home grown athletes to those based abroad. The moment the foreign based athletes were made to feel indispensable, they developed the bad habit of holding the nation to ransom at the slightest opportunity.
Acts of unpatriotism on the part of athletes started to appear because sports administrators had given them sufficient reasons to be unpatriotic. The likes of Kingsley Obiekwu, Gloria Alozie, Emmnauel Olaseidbe, Daniel Igali, and a host of others took up other nationalities. This development divided Nigerians as many said by dumping their fatherland, the athletes did not show enough patriotism. However, those who took side with the athletes said they know where their cake is baked.
Unfortunately, nobody paid anything attention to the steady decline in Nigerian sports until the father of them all, football started to negotiate the dangerous bend towards total extinction. Before now, football kept keeping hope alive by qualifying for major championships. What many did not notice was the consistent drop in performance at each of the tournaments.
Even as football died, those charged with the responsibility of administering the game busied themselves with politics. Almost everybody who calls himself football stakeholder wants to be in charge and it is said the whiff of estacode in foreign currencies is the motivating factor. The key issue of developmental programmes is secondary.
It is an open secret that since 2006 when Alhaji Sani Lulu Abdullahi emerged chairman of the then NFA, Nigerian football has known no peace. There emerged a group that called itself football stakeholders. The group made up of predominately State Football Associations Chairmen master-minded the emergence of Lulu as the chairman of NFA and within a twinkle of an eye, the same body broke into factions. Lulu’s turbulent reign as chairman ended in 2010 even as he was not yet ready to relinquish the plum position.
A highly controversial election in 2010 brought the present NFF president, Alhaji Aminu Maigari into office. There is no doubting the fact that he has good intentions for Nigerian football but those who felt dis-satisfied with the process that brought him to the position he is occupying have made Nigerian football ungovernable under him.
Maigari’s NFF has not fare well at championships attended. Apart from the victory recorded by the Flying Eagles in South Africa on their way to the 2011 FIFA U-20 World Cup, the country could not impress at any of the competitions. Until recently, the present NFF did not qualify for a single championship. All the competitions attended from 2011 were inherited and nothing good came out of any of them.
Following the free-fall in the nation’s football occasioned by the embarrassing results at international competitions as well as the lingering crisis in the sector, government shuddered to the nagging fact that something is seriously wrong in the sports sector. As a result, government’s attention is now on sports, particularly football and desperate measures are being put in place to arrest the drift.
In this regard, the House of Representatives Committee on sports in a desperate bid to save the nation’s football is working round the clock to get the NFF Act 2012 passed. Already the bill proposed by the committee has passed the second reading and a public hearing has been held.
Interestingly, the upper chamber is also said to be keen on having the NFF bill passed into law. Once an enabling law is passed, it may help in blocking some of the loopholes that have been exploited by many to make football administration in Nigeria very difficult.
Even before the public hearing organized by the House Committee on sports, the supervising minister of sports, Malam Bolaji Abdullahi had attempted to restore peace in Nigerian football. Remarkable progress was made when he organized a peace parley between the NFF and some of the aggrieved parties who had taken the federation to court. It’s on record that at the end of the meeting, Dr. Sam Sam Jaja and Barrister Raymond Nnaji accepted to bury the hatchet. However, this was after the NFF agreed to compensate them adequately.
Furthermore, the desperate efforts to save what is left of Nigerian sports took the centre stage again last week when the Senate Committee on sports organized a public hearing to find the way out of the doldrums. This time it was not only football that was discussed as stakeholders were given the opportunity to take a holistic look at the sports sector.
Speakers at the public hearing made startling revelations with ex-international Austin Popo causing a major stir when he bluntly singled out ex-internationals Chief Segun Odegbami, Justice Adokiye Amasiemeka and Christian Chukwu as being the brains behind the lingering crisis in Nigerian sports. He narrated how the trio worked in cohort with the Dr. Patrick Ekeji’s National Sports Commission, NSC, to make sure that Super Eagles failed at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
Most of the speakers pointed accusing fingers but their remaining fingers pointed back at them. For instance, the NSC DG, Ekeji said over 70 percent of football coaches in Nigeria are quacks. Before the coaches could absorb the shock of such damning verdict by one of their own, the administrators had a bitter pill tucked down their throats the next day by the acting minister of sports who said only 17 percent of them are qualified to administer sports.
It was like a hearing of accusations and counter accusations but the last day of the public hearing presided over by the Senate Committee on sports, Senator Guman witnessed a moment of respite when the sports minister declared that he was ready to prostrate before the key elements behind the crisis in Nigeria football, if that would help restore peace in the important sport. He received a standing ovation for this eagerness to stoop to conquer.
Ongoing attempts to bring Nigerian sports back on track simply show that a stitch was not made in time to save the nine being used at the moment. Desperate times require desperate measures but it is a known fact that desperate measures sometimes bring only momentary reprieve. For now, it is a case of motion without movement in Nigerian sports.