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Corruption, in-fighting, lack of planning, over celebration of victory and inability to manage success have created problems and dwarfed the growth of football in Nigeria
| By Anayo Ezugwu | Aug. 5, 2013 @ 01:00 GMT
FOR several years, Nigerian Football Federation, NFF, formerly the Nigeria Football Association, NFA, wore the tag of a football body without a future or ambition. In 2008, the association changed its name to Nigerian Football Federation, NFF, but it did take long before it earned another derogatory nickname of a body without focus. In a way the two nicknames seem to have played a part in the way the organisation has been conducting its affairs over the years.
Apparently, for lack of ambition, planning, focus and foresight, the organisation, despite all the money it had made over the years, did not consider it imperative to build its own headquarters. Thus, it lived in rented offices for 68 years. Mercifully, the presidential task force on Super Eagles’ qualification for 2010 World Cup in South Africa, set up by the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in 2009, had foresight and focus.
The task force led by Governor Chibuike Amaechi of Rivers State and Patrick Ekeji, former director-general of sports, sought and got an approval of the presidency to utilise the balance of the funds it raised from the private sector to build a befitting headquarters for the football body. Thus, the NFF is now a proud owner of a 27-room building with modern facilities, including a penthouse and several meeting rooms. The N336,321,111 edifice was commissioned by Namadi Sambo, vice president, on behalf of President Goodluck Jonathan in Abuja, on July 18.
But the question being asked in the sports circles is whether the relocation to a permanent place of residence will eliminate all the past problems of the NFF and make the body now accountable, transparent, responsive and responsible as the nation’s football administrator. Will the hood now make the monk? That, indeed, must be a billion naira question.
Over the years, the NFF has been known as a house of corruption characterised by in-fighting. The Glass House, former office of the association, which ought to be transparent in all its activities, became an opaque house where corrupt practices and misappropriation of public funds became its other name. For instance, it is yet to explain the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of $238,000 in March 2009 and $80,000 in June 2012 from its custody. The monies were meant to be used as match bonuses for the national teams on international engagements.
The unabated corruption associated with the Glass House has contributed immensely to the poor performances of Nigeria at international competitions. In the past three international tournaments that Nigerian teams participated in, the country did not do well as expected. In the last Under-20 world cup in Turkey, Nigeria didn’t go beyond the round of 16. At the Brazil 2013 Confederations cup, the Nigerian Super Eagles did not go beyond the group stage. Likewise at the Under-17 African Nations Cup in Morocco, the team lost out at the semi final stage.
These poor performances at international tournaments have exposed to Nigerians that all is not well at the Glass House. The nation got a glimpse of the crisis in the country’s football house when the Super Eagles were to travel to Brazil to take part in the Confederations Cup. The players refused to board the aircraft FIFA sent to pick them in South Africa because of controversy over match bonuses. They were supposed to earn $10,000 for the win against Kenya, but were offered $5000 instead. Also for their draw match against Namibia, the players were offered $2,500 instead of the expected $5000.
Investigations by Realnews have revealed that the burden of huge allowances and salary bills has forced the NFF to resort to reduction in the number of backroom staff of the national teams and also a cut in allowances and match bonuses. Paul Bassey, member, NFF technical committee, said there is no way the NFF would continue to pay $10,000 to Super Eagles players as winning bonuses because it was broke. Moreover, he said, the NFF had continued to pay $10,000 as bonus after the World Cup in South Africa in order to encourage the team to qualify for the 2012 Nations Cup which it failed.
“The NFF woke up one day to find that it cannot continue, with the enhanced bonus especially now when our teams are now doing well. The Under-17, has qualified for the world cup as well as the Under-20, the Beach Soccer team and so on. What NFF is being given as budget is not enough, so we decided to look inward. We have too many assistants and backroom staff for the national teams and then we said henceforth, every national team will have a maximum of three coaches, that is the coach, his assistant and the goalkeeper trainer. Let me tell you, the coach of the Super Eagles earns $20,000 as winning bonus per match; a doctor in the team, $8,000, secretary of the team, $8,000, the team coordinator, $8,000, assistant coaches $15,000 respectively and the players $10,000.
“Many of the backroom staff of the Super Eagles are earning $5,000, but the winning bonus of the chief coach of the Flying Eagles is $4,000, while the chief coach of the Golden Eaglets gets $2,000. So we find out that there are a lot of things that were wrong because a doctor and the secretary of the Super Eagles are earning more bonuses than the chief coach of a national team. So, there is need for us to restructure all these things and that is what we have done,” he said.
But the players are complaining that they were not duly informed by the NFF and that whenever they travel to honour an international engagement, NFF members would always travel with their brothers and sisters, lodge them in a five star hotel and finance their expenses with the so called budget that is not available. The players are saying that if the NFF wants to cut their bonuses, they should live by examples by first cutting down their budget. Vincent Enyeama, vice-captain of the Super Eagles, said during the confederations cup that the bonus row with the NFF was not yet over. “It’s something that shouldn’t have gone into the press. We don’t want to elaborate on it. We want to concentrate on the championship. We haven’t settled anything; after the championship, we will revisit the issue,” Enyeama said.
Realnews also learnt that the recent row over match bonuses was instigated by the players and coaching crew who want to continue to collect fat allowances that are incomparable to what any other team in the African continent gets. What the players and officials have earned in friendly matches, the 2013 Nations Cup and the 2014 World Cup qualifiers, have made past players of the senior national team jealous as well as justify their demand for pension from the NFF. The allowances have shown that the present generation of the Super Eagles players can be classified as the luckiest in the history of Nigerian football.
For the 2013 Nations Cup alone, each Super Eagles player returned from South Africa with $77,500, (N12.2m). The players got a lump sum of $30,000 (N4.7m) for the preliminary round of matches, while they also received $12,500 (N1.9m) for the quarter final victory over Cote d’ Ivoire. For the semi-final victory over Mali, each player got $15,000 (N2.37m) and the final game victory over Burkina Faso fetched each player $20,000 (N3.16m).
Interestingly, while the players were smiling, their coaches also had a bigger pie from the Nations Cup largess offered by the NFF. Keshi pocketed $155,000 (N50.5m) in allowances from the preliminary round to the final, while his four assistants namely, Daniel Amokachi, Ike Shorunmu, Sylvanus Okpala and Valere Houandonou, his Togolese assistant, got $115,000 respectively.
All these allowances did not include the match bonuses paid for the friendly and the World Cup qualifiers played since Keshi took over as the coach of the team after Samson Siasia, former coach, was sacked for failing to qualify Nigeria for the 2012 Nations Cup jointly hosted by Gabon and Equatorial Guinea.
The federation has also spent N102,140,675 on the senior national team alone, as allowances paid to the players and their coaches between November 2011 and immediately after the Nations Cup in South Africa. A summary of the salaries paid to the coaches for the 16 months leading to February this year also indicated that the federation had paid out N176 million to the five coaches. Keshi, at N5 million per month, has collected a gross salary payment of N80 million, while his most senior assistant, Amokachi, at N3 million, was paid N48 million. Okpala, Shorunmu and Hounandinou, at N1 million per month collectively got N48million for the period before they were sacked in the reorganisation that also affected Keshi’s backroom staff.
The NFF is said to owing Keshi and his coaching crew five months of unpaid salaries. Chris Green, chairman, NFF technical committee, confirmed that the federation owes Keshi and his crew five months’ salaries and hoped that it would offset the bills by the end of this month (July). “Yes, we owe Keshi about four months’ salary arrears. It is also true that we have not paid him since the AFCON feat in South Africa. However, we have structured our national teams in a manner that will make it possible for coaches to get daily allowances, match bonuses, free feeding while in camp. But we are working round the clock to ensure that by the end of this month, Keshi’s outstanding entitlements are settled,” he said.
Meanwhile, on July 9, Bolaji Abdullahi, minister of sports, set up a panel to probe the crisis over match allowances involving players of the Super Eagles and the NFF in Namibia. The players rejected the allowance approved for them by the NFF for two away games in Kenya and Namibia for their 2014 pre-qualification matches. As a result of the protest, the footballers initially refused to board the plane which was to take them to Brazil to participate in the FIFA Confederations Cup.
The panel will determine the immediate and remote causes of the crisis, develop a code of conduct for players on national assignments, and make any other recommendation that may be deemed necessary. The panel will be chaired by Segun Adeniyi, a member of the presidential task force, which was set up to ensure Nigeria’s qualification for the 2010 World Cup.
Matthew Edafe, a sport presenter with Brila FM, has faulted the way the federation handled the bonus controversy. He said that the NFF didn’t handle the bonus row with care and maturity. He also traced the problem to the presidential task force formed by late President Yar’Adua to make sure that Nigeria qualified for the 2010 World Cup. “Before the last World Cup, there was a presidential task force set up to make sure that we qualified for the competition. The task force was given a blank cheque to do anything within its power to make sure Nigeria got the ticket to play in the 2010 World Cup.
“As an incentive that committee increased the match bonus of the team without a corresponding increase in the budget of the NFF. And after failing to qualify for the 2012 Nations Cup, Keshi came in and qualified us for the 2013 Nations Cup. It must be stated that the NFF encouraged the team by paying them the same bonus of $10,000 on the way to the Nations Cup. In the first two group matches which the Super Eagles drew and up to the final game, they were paid $10,000. Therefore, the NFF came back and said it couldn’t continue borrowing money to pay the bonuses, don’t forget that in the history of Nigerian football, no team has ever enjoyed support like this present team in terms of playing friendly matches on every FIFA match day. It became an issue for the NFF and it said it would go back to the $5000 for winning bonus and $2500 for draw bonus. But the NFF was not diplomatic in handling the issue with the players,” he said.
Apart from corruption, planlessness, fielding of over-aged players in international youth championship is also part of the problem of Nigerian football. The nation used to be successful in youth football, until it was discovered that it was fielding over-aged players. Sport analysts are worried that if not arrested, the dwindling nature of youth football development would affect the country in the long run. Bassey, is of the view that the major problem is lack of grassroots development and using of over-aged players in youth competitions. He said that the system in Nigeria does not support youth football development in the sense that the country is always in a hurry to win at all costs.
“The tenure of the NFF board is measured by the number of trophies the national teams win in their participation in the Nations Cup, World Cup and the rest of them and therefore the development of football had been submerged. There has been a gap between the past successes like in 1994 and thereafter because there was no succession plan. If you look at the rules and regulations of the Nigeria Premier League, it states that every club must have a feeder team and that the feeder teams are supposed to play a curtain raiser before the main match. But it is not so because the funds to run the feeder teams are not there.
“Another thing they will tell you is that they don’t know what comes out of it because it is not tangible. There is no trophy for it. Academies in this country are not regulated; the competitions are not supported; coaches are corrupt; they take over-aged players for the purpose of winning trophies. So, there is no development in the game; we have failed to give credit to coaches who produce stars. Our problem is that we are result-oriented, win at all costs syndrome, counting trophies as the yardstick for success,” he said.
Adokiye Amesiemaka, former international football player, said that the problems of Nigerian football are beyond Keshi. He said that he would not blame the Confederations Cup failure on the technical crew of the Super Eagles but emphasised the importance of youth development in football. He told Realnews on phone that if Nigerians appreciate this fact, they would begin to identify the source of problems denying Nigeria results in senior international assignments. Amesiemaka has repeatedly said that Nigeria is the architect of its failures by not only fielding over-aged players in youth competitions but also lacking in standard youth development programme.
“When we won the Nations Cup in 1980, Nigerians celebrated our victory wildly. It was the first time that we were winning the cup. They saw us as a superb team but that our team was not that fantastic. Some of the characteristics of that team still exist in the teams we have had in recent times. And I’m talking about individual brilliance. When Otto Gloria became our coach just about a year before the Nations Cup, he found out that we were lacking in many things. He didn’t see the coordination, the flair, the understanding that a team built from youth level would have had. And this was because we had no youth development policy or programme.
“You met senior players in the senior team and you found out that they lacked some basics, what would you do? Gloria made it clear that there was no magic that he could do and that the best was to manage the players, to review or study how opponents play and come out with the tactics he felt would win the matches. As far as Otto Gloria was concerned, we had missed some real coaching and the best he could do was to harness and build us into a winning team in a way possible,” he said.
Amesiemaka said in spite of the potentials in the country, it would be difficult to develop a system that can produce world beaters. He attributed the problems to the federation to the absence of foresight and argued that it was against this background that after an evaluation of the performance of the Super Eagles in the Confederations Cup, he concluded that “the problem is beyond Keshi. It cuts across board-the administrators of the game, the coaching problems, lack of youth development programmes and even the Nigerian fans.”
Coaches at the senior national team, according to Amesiemaka, would have less work to do if players passed through good coaching from the youth level to the senior level. He maintained that they must be young players who, if they are 15, for example, will still be playing football for the next 15 to 20 years. But in Nigeria, a player shines at the Under 17 level and after a few years, old age catches up with him and he disappears.
Edafe is also of the view that lack of continuity is the major problem facing Nigerian football. He said that the inability to manage success and lack of adequate planning are the problems dwarfing the nations’ football. “The whole reason for all these problems is that a country’s sport is a true reflection the country’s life. We have never in the history of this country known how to manage success properly. It happened in 1980, 1994, 1996 and the Under 17 when our national teams won trophies. We find it difficult to translate the success. It is happening in our league; we have a league that is very poor. We have never managed success properly because managing success takes a lot of planning, focus and learning. You must be prepared to learn and because we didn’t do all these, it took us back to the era of gambling. You win, you celebrate more than what you win. You spend more money celebrating. This shows you that what is happening in Nigerian football is a true reflection of our national life,” he said.
It was against this background that President Goodluck Jonathan, organised a-one-day retreat late last year to revive grassroots football in the country. But many questions have been raised on the relevance of the retreat which promised to increase the funding of the sport ministry and encourage youth and grassroots developments. More than six months after, the sport ministry and the NFF are yet to commence the implementation of the communiqué issued at the retreat which many Nigerians believe is the bedrock of sport development in the country.
This is perhaps, not the worry of Aminu Maigari, NFF president. What is of immediate concern to him is the choice of players for Super Eagles’ international matches. He said after the poor performance of the Super Eagles at the Confederations Cup that the NFF would start being involved in the selection of the players. He said that the NFF is yet to find out why Keshi has interest in some players and continued taking them to tournaments even when it is obvious they are not good enough for the competition.
“We are no longer fooled on this matter and we have to take more interest in the players that represent Nigeria. This is a national team and not a private team. He has to get the Nigerians we know are in better form to feature in the Super Eagles rather than feature players nobody knows the clubs they are playing for,” he said.
Amidst of all these challenges, key members of the Supper Eagles are still in support of Keshi and his leadership style. Some of them believe that the federation should give the coach time to build a national team that every Nigerian would be proud of. John Obi Mikel, Chelsea of England midfielder, is full of praises for Keshi for building a new and solid team since he took over from Siasia. “He is the boss, that’s how we call him. He is a nice guy to work with, disciplined, outgoing and not afraid to tell you the truth. If you are not playing well, he will be the first to tell you. I am very happy with the way he conducts the selection of players. Players like him very much. I think Nigeria is getting better with Stephen Keshi in charge,” he said.
But it doubtful how long the NFF board will co-habit with Keshi because of the members continue to lose by not hiring foreign coaches from whom they make their percentage cuts in respect of the jumbo salaries and allowances paid to them. That is why Nigeria football will hardly grow because of the proclivity its manager for mediocrity, corruption and taking from it rather than giving their best for football business to grow.
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