Nigerians express serious concern over the stream of failures of the country’s national teams at international competitions

Football in Nigeria is on its knees. For sometime now, the prowess of the nation in international football tournaments has progressively suffered a decline in all the soccer teams. Recently, both the U-23 male football team and the Super Falcons, failed to qualify for the London 2012 Olympics when many Nigerians hoped the teams would eventually do so and also perform well at next year’s Olympics. This would satisfy their hunger of a good football outing after a hiatus of success stories. The teams’ poor outings came on the heels of the country’s senior national team’s failure to qualify for next year’s Africa Cup of Nations Championship, seventeen years after Nigeria lifted the trophy inTunisia 1994. Nigerian players have not made the Confederation of Africa Football, CAF, nominations and winners’ list in the past five years. How did Nigeria find itself in this situation?

Not too long ago, a school of thought said the slide in Nigeria’s football is caused by corruption in the country’s sport administration. Yusuf Suleiman, immediate past minister of Sport, recently said the steep decline in performance would continue unabated if corruption in the sector was not curbed. In 2008, over $200,000 got missing from the vaults of the Nigerian Football Federation, NFF. Though some top officials of the federation were briefly arrested and questioned on the incident, nothing has been heard of it since then. Though, a lot of attention is now focused on our local leagues, the standard of play has not improved commensurate with the money pumped into the league because of corruption.

Henry Nwosu, a former Nigerian international and coach of the 2008 Beijing Olympics football team, said that the retrogression of the country’s soccer is mainly caused by Nigeria’s poor outing at age-grade competitions. Closely related to this is the failure of many secondary schools to hold inter-house sport competitions. This is the competition that exposes future football and sport talents to scouts who then draft them into age-grade competitions. With the absence of this fodder, the room became wide open for cheating as older players are paraded as below 17 and 21.

This affects the performance of the players in foreign clubs when they eventually turn professional. They burn out after a few years unlike what is expected of a tender-aged athlete. Eventually, many soccer scouts run shy of signing on Nigerian players to top international clubs. So, despite the fact that Nigeria arguably boasts of having the largest number of players in foreign lands, a sprinkle of them play in the topmost leagues in Europe.

The few ones playing in top leagues rarely honour Nigeria’s invitation to play for the country. Eventually, when the Confederation of Africa Football, CAF, lists nominees for its best players awards, no Nigerian is mentioned whereas in the 1990s and early 2000s, Nigeria dominated the nominees’ and winners’ lists. In the 2011 edition, CAF did not list Nigeria among national teams of the year category whereas Niger, Libya, Cote D’Ivoire and Botswana made the list.

Ahmed Musa and Perpetua Nkwocha saved the country’s face by appearing under the most promising talent and best female player categories. As witnessed in the past few years, no male Nigerian footballer made the list. So, discovering and nurturing new and younger talents with the best professional and patriotic ideals will stem this tide.

The decline in Nigerian youth football which is the nucleus of a good soccer team was more glaring at the recently concluded Lagos International Youth Cup held at the Teslim Balogun Stadium, Surulere, Lagos, Nigeria. At the end of the competition sponsored and hosted by the Lagos State government through its Ministry of Sport, Lagos United, the host team, lost all their matches in the tournament. Surprisingly, the players were made up of players invited from the last edition of Principals’ Cup which supposedly comprised students from secondary schools in Lagos State. The competition, which drew young players in the U-17 age bracket from Liberty Academy in Ghana, SuperSport United, South Africa and FC Utrecht from The Netherlands was won by the South African team.

The only bright speck on the otherwise dark cloud of the host team’s inability to win the tournament, was that the result gingered the state government into action. It has consequently mandated the technical crew of Lagos United to parade genuine U-17 players who can successfully compete in the youth tournaments. An official of the state’s sport ministry who pleaded anonymity, said “It is time for Nigeria to jettison the syndrome of winning at all costs with the use of players above the age limit in any age grade tournament.”

But, the state’s efforts would be inadequate if it is not complemented with many other developmental programmes to discover new talents. For instance, Kaitano Tempo, coach of SuperSport United, said that in South Africa, they have laid down structures of training players from tender ages to enable them to become world stars.

At such academies, the players are continuously trained from one level to the other. From there, the players develop synergy and understanding as members of a team. According to him, “The longer the players stay together the better they become. This paid for us in the Lagos Youth Cup. You can see that we have a good team.” He disclosed that when they got the invitation for the tournament, they were unfazed because they were well prepared.

Though Monday Odigie, coach of the Golden Eaglets, was at the venue of the tournament to smoke out new talents, that effort would not yield results now because he has inadequate time to groom new football discoveries before the U-17 competition starts. The former Bayelsa United soccer tactician, said that though he was in dire need of young players to fortify his team, none of the Lagos United players was qualified to join the Eaglets in their preparation for Rwanda 2011 Africa Junior Championship, AJC.

He prefers to have a less formidable team and use the players at his disposal instead of inviting footballers from the Nigeria Premier League or professional clubs in the country because he wants to be very professional about his selection.  “Even if I fail to qualify Nigeria for the AJC, Nigerians would see a set of footballers, who have blended together and who are truly U-17,” he said. Odigie assisted Samson Siasia, Super Eagles’ former coach, at the Beijing Olympics and John Obuh at the Nigeria 2009 U-17 World Cup.

The coach’s dilemma is compounded by the fact that there are few businesslike football developmental academies in the country. Pepsi Football Academy, the premier institution that devoted itself to this pursuit is no longer visible in this regard. Segun Odegbami, a former Super Eagles’ player, has been actively working on the young talents he is grooming at his academy, but Siasia is yet to fully develop his football academy for full take-off. Even then, how do they really ascertain the real age of their players? Do they have the structures needed for an academy? How competent are the coaches training the players?

Odegbami said his academy avoids that pitfall by asking prospective students to produce their original birth certificates. Also, the students are housed in a good expanse of land near Abeokuta which is conducive for learning and practice from well-trained and tested football instructors. “In a few years, Nigeria will see the groundbreaking result of the academy,” he said.

That would be a big relief. For some time now, Nigeria has been tacitly accused of parading over-aged players at age-grade football competitions. Age discrepancies in Nigeria football climaxed during the 2009 FIFA U-17 World Cup hosted by Nigeria. Adokiye Amasiemeka, former Nigerian international, then alleged that Fortune Chuwkudi, captain of the silver-winning Golden Eaglets, was not within the age bracket stipulated for the tournament. But FIFA countered this accusation by saying that it had earlier carried out Magnetic Resonance Imaging, MRI, test on all the players and cleared them of age-cheating.

Ordinarily, this task is supposed to belong to the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, which is supposed to have a scouting department saddled with the responsibility of discovering young talents and grooming them to become world stars. Instead, the NFF prefers ready made materials from the local league and foreign-based professionals to feature in age grade competitions. This situation spiralled into the rot being seen today in Nigeria’s local leagues and football tournaments.

The country has progressively had a bad run of outings at the Africa Cup of Nations. During Mali 2002, Senegal contained the Super Eagles for more than 20 minutes. The country played with all its bright and fading stars but the Super Eagles won a bronze in Mali and have fared poorly ever since. The senior national team also won a bronze in 2004, 2006, and in 2010 after it was stopped by Ghana in the semi-final. It won silver at home in 2000 when Cameroon triumphed on penalties. Now, the country’s national anthem would not be played in the next competition to be co-hosted by Equatorial Guinea and Gabon because its senior national team failed to qualify.

Many blamed Siasia for not fielding Vincent Enyeama in goal for the last group qualifying match. The NFF suspended Enyeama, Nigeria’s first-choice goalkeeper and Africa’s best goaltender, for insubordination to Siasia a few days before the country’s last crucial qualifying match.

Though many reasons are adduced for the recent poor showing, the decline had started before now. In May 2010, the Super Eagles were beaten by Togo in the final of the West Africa Football Union, WAFU, Nations Cup in Abeokuta, Ogun State capital. Both the Nigerian female and male football teams were not at the All Africa Games that ended in Mozambique recently. The male and female teams were stopped by Ghana, an old foe. The Super Falcons have lost their dominance over female teams in Africa.

Moreover, Odegbami said the constant in-fighting and current lawsuits challenging NFF’s legitimacy are also some of the issues that the federation must address before it can successfully implement any reforms to move Nigeria’s football forward now. The Nigeria Police have insisted that NFF’s Aminu Maigari-led board stands nullified by the order of Justice Okon Abang of the Federal High Court, Lagos, until a superior order vacating that order is made available to the law enforcement agency. At a point, Abubakar Ringim, inspector-general of police, invited the NFF hierarchy to a meeting to resolve the ongoing football crisis and even threatened to order the NFF secretariat closed if the superior order is not produced.

The invitation follows a petition written earlier by National Association of Nigerian Footballers to President Goodluck Jonathan for the Federal Government to respect a valid order given by the Federal High Court, Lagos, nullifying the August 26, 2010 NFF elections. The President consequently ordered the IGP to ensure the complete observance of the Federal High Court order and that it is only to be vacated by a superior court order before the NFF board returns to the Glass House. This remains the prevailing situation as the embattled NFF has not produced the order.

According to the experts, if these are not addressed, Nigeria’s football will not only stop crawling but lie prostrate soon.