That show of shame in Nigerian football

Both matches were played simultaneously, as the winner with a better goal difference would have qualified for the Amateur National League Division III. The big irony is that, as at half time, Plateau United Feeders led Akurba FC by 7-0 while Police Machine was leading Bubayero 6-0. This means that in the 45 minutes of […]

Both matches were played simultaneously, as the winner with a better goal difference would have qualified for the Amateur National League Division III.

The big irony is that, as at half time, Plateau United Feeders led Akurba FC by 7-0 while Police Machine was leading Bubayero 6-0. This means that in the 45 minutes of the second half Feeders scored 72 goals while Machine netted 61 goals. If it takes at least one minute to score a goal and restart a game, how did they do it? And the biggest irony of the situation was that both games were played simultaneously, precisely to avoid match-fixing.
To stave off a wholesale indictment from the world football governing body (FIFA), the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) mandated its disciplinary committee, chaired by Chief Mike Umeh, to investigate the matches. In implementing Umeh committee’s report, the NFF pronounced a life ban on all the players of the four teams and their officials. Also, the personal details, names and photographs of the affected players and their coaches will be published, according to NFF, to ensure that they do not circumvent the sanction.
Corruption permeates almost everything in this country. We must remember that this is not the first time Nigerian football has gone down this road of infamy. On 12 August 2006 in a game involving Akwa United and Calabar Rovers, United won 13-0. Rovers, knowing they were doomed to relegation, sold out to United which aided Akwa United to gain promotion instead of Bussdor Football Club. (It helped that Rovers had three players sent off during the match to facilitate the massacre.) In the aftermath of that fiasco, though Calabar Rovers was disbanded, an investigation panel intriguingly said it did not find anything wrong with that result, and Akwa United continued to play.
There is no field of endeavour that has united the citizens of this country and at the same time brought it international glory and recognition like the game of football. At the lowest point in our evolution as a nation, the exploits of the various national teams at the global stage had stemmed the tide. It is a shame that the current leadership of the Nigeria Football Federation has, through its ambivalence, allowed the vices that have crippled almost every other sector of the economy to creep into its activities. We do not expect anything better when many officials of NFF are pre-occupied with scrambling for tickets to accompany the national teams to international engagements in order to cart home some “estacode”. Scant attention is paid to grassroots games that actually need attention.
Sports, especially football, are now a veritable tool in international diplomacy. This, more than any other thing, explains why the minister of sports and the NFF hierarchy should guard against any wanton abuse. Football in Nigeria, if well organised, should be a major foreign exchange earner as is obtainable in most South American countries.
Banning these players and their officials is not enough deterrent. We do not take the NFF seriously with its promises to publish their photographs. The NFF’s websites is at the moment not functional; so where does it intend to publish the photos? Going forward, NFF should create a functional verifiable website that should contain the data of its entire accredited clubs, players, coaches, referees and its statues.
While we agree with Chief Umeh in his submission that “the winners were desperate to win, while the losers were too willing to lose,” we strongly recommended that these players, their technical crews, the officials that officiated these matches and the owners of the football clubs should be formally prosecuted in a competent court of law to ascertain their culpability in this show of shame.
This is a case fit for EFCC’s or ICPC’s intervention; it is corruption of monumental proportions.