As a boy in Samonda, Ibadan, time for Àwàdà (comedy) on week nights was a thrill. The Àláwàdà (comic) was the legendary Chief Moses Olaiya Adejumo, popularly known as Baba Sala. Apart from his weekly dose of sumptuous television humour back then, he also voiced advertorial jingles. Among them was one in which he decried a child who serially performed poorly in school. Of the child, he summarised thus: “Kò páàsì, kò féèlì, kò kúrò l’ójú kan náà” (He neither passed nor failed; he is stuck in just a position). I have found this oxymoron fitting as a description of the state of Nigerian domestic football as it is today.
In recent years, football in Nigeria as exemplified by the Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL); Nigeria National League (NNL) and the Nigerian Women’s Professional League (NWPL), has cemented its position as a metaphor for confusion and maladministration. Their father, the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) and grandfather, the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports are also in this loop. Now, cap the conundrum with the presence of a child out of wedlock, the League Management Company (LMC). They all present a potpourri of messy management of soccer in the country, as things in that sector of our national life currently stand.
The ubiquitous coronavirus blew what appeared to be the final whistle on soccer everywhere in the world this outgoing season; but thank goodness it turned out not to be. When the COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) in early March this year, it brought nearly everything, including actual and related football activities everywhere in the world, to a standstill. The virus ushered in what we now know as the “new normal”. Football, its players, administrators, followers and hundreds of associated businesses were all halted from Canberra to Quito; from Cape Town to Oslo.
However, long before the advent of COVID-19 but shortly after the emergence of Amaju Melvin Pinnick as the NFF president, local football at all levels had been in a quandary. His board could argue that things had always been like that, but rather than improve, our local game has sunk further in the Pinnick era. To many Nigerians, football in Nigeria is non-existent except, perhaps when the Super Eagles are playing.
Football seasons in Nigeria, in recent years, have been a pile of annoying uncertainty. Put Sam Nwaoko’s biases aside and dispassionately consider the sorry state of the NPFL and the NNL; and the quagmire called NWPL! Would you say we are normal? Football in our country now has its own new normal: It has not been normal. Soccer seasons hardly ever end normally or according to plan, or schedule, or projection. There hasn’t been a title sponsor for years on end. There is an obvious lack of trust in football managers. The oldest cup competition in the country, known then as Challenge Cup, is still part of the disorderly jumble. We are not even sure what kind of romance AITEO is into with the NFF regarding the cherished competition.
In the 2017/2018 season, just as the world was preparing for the FIFA World Cup hosted by Russia, the NFF ended the NPFL abruptly. What the NFF cited as a reason for that perplexing action was the excuse that Nigerian teams for continental competitions needed to be submitted to CAF by its October 15, 2018 deadline. Even that October 15 date was a special indulgence Nigeria got from CAF, a sign that all was not well in the Nigerian house of football. FIFA’s hammer was dangling on the country, even up to July of that year! Before the LMC pulled the plug on the league in August 2018, the NPFL had been on suspension from June…! What difference can we point to afterward that crisis?
The NNL went on break in December 2019 for no cogent reason and never resumed till the league was cancelled last month as a result of the Covid-19. By that action, spanners were thrown in the works of the serious football clubs while hordes of young Nigerian professional footballers were just swinging back and forth like a pendulum.
Nigeria’s perpetually fledgling football has always been a source of heartache. It was floundering when John Mastroudes with Jossy Lad built a remarkable Leventis United of Ibadan. Domestic football was not at its best when Chief M.K.O. Abiola ran a solid Abiola Babes of Abeokuta. Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu had to step in to save Spartans of Owerri; he rebranded the club to become a more formidable Iwuanyanwu Nationale because of poor state of domestic football. Things were not also rosy when Julius Berger of Lagos, New Nigeria Bank of Benin, Udoji United of Onitsha, African Continental Bank (ACB) of Lagos, Ranchers Bees of Kaduna, Stationery Stores of Lagos, Femo Scorpions of Eruwa, BCC Lions of Gboko, and such privately run clubs held sway on the Nigerian soccer scene.
Rangers International of Enugu, IICC Shooting Stars of Ibadan, Mighty Jets of Jos, Bendel Insurance of Benin etc, rose through the hardship to Nigerian football folklore. As bad as things were those days, Nigeria had a football culture and had a direction. It was far better than the vicissitudes of fortune we have now. Young people knew our teams and discussed local soccer, unlike now. Local matches were seen on the television and stadiums were filled on match days. Now, especially in the past few years, our domestic soccer has become Àwàdà, a painful joke.
From all considerable angles, domestic football has been swimming in relegation waters since the advent of Pinnick. It has been battling all kinds of known, unknown, foreseen and unforeseen opponents, including but not limited to a certain Chris Giwa, and a bereft beret, Solomon Dalung. Some think we have been relegated. Some think we are stuck in a position, like Baba Sala’s riveted schoolchild. I think we are bereaved football-wise.
Like many things Nigerian, we cannot get just one thing right. Normal things become abnormal in Nigeria, and we thrive in the attendant chaos. Otherwise, over the years, we should have decried the absence of even one professional football outfit in the country and work to prevent what killed the earlier ones. We should have tapped into the big business which professional football is and be inspired by the realisation that even Liberia has a better organized domestic football than Nigeria! Things were bad, but the past few years have particularly been pathetic.
We used to joke that Nigerian Football Association (NFA) meant “no future ambition”, but we have an NPFL that has not been able to lift itself off the ground, it’s the Nigerian perpetually fledgling league. Any wonder Gernot Rhor, brought in by Pinnick, has not given our leagues even a look-in?
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