But for U17 World Cup, Nigeria won’t Have Age-grade Competition, Says Idowu

• Says 10-year football masterplan will redirect Nigeria’s football

The Minister of Youths and Sports, Sunday Dare, recently presented the 10-year Football Master plan to President Muhammadu Buhari, along with committee members. In an interview with Kunle Adewale, Vice Chairman of the Committee, Yemi Idowu, gave an insight on how the Football Masterplan would help re-engineer the country’s football, some of the anomalies going in the NFF and indeed Nigerian football

   For some time now Nigeria’s football has scored many lows and setbacks culminating the Minister of Youths and Sports Development, Sunday Dare to set up a 16-man committee which was headed by former president of the Nigerian Football Association (NFA) Alhaji Ibrahim Galadima to come up with a football Masterplan development which will show the direction which the future of the country’s football will take.

Other members of the committee include former law maker, Ayo Omidiran, former national team captains, Segun Odegbami and Sunday Oliseh and foremost journalists Ikeddy Isiguzo and Ade Ojeikere.

According to the vice chairman of the committee, Yemi Idowu, recommendations of the Master plan’s two-volume report of the will help in re-engineering the game of football in Nigeria, while the intervention from government will help take the country’s football to its Eldorado.

The 10-year Football Masterplan according to the Chairman of Nath Boys, is targeted at re- engineer the country’s football from the foundation to the top using the bottom-top approach to achieve more robust development.

While acknowledging the role of government in the development of the game he said through the 10-year football masterplan it has become imperative to address some of the issues bedeviling Nigerian football stating that the intervention when fully implemented would attain it goals. “It’s like an architectural drawing. This is the house we want to build, this where we’re going. The short-term strategy which is that, let us start with what we have. Let us see how we can reallocate resources to make it a bit more efficient and effective,” Idowu said.

The masterplan makes some far reaching recommendations on laws and statutes guiding the administration of football and seeking to re-engineer the legal framework that will put to rest the legality of the Nigeria Football Federation, (NFF), with more equitable and democratic representation in the congress of the NFF.

“Nigeria is still a sovereign nation; you’re wearing the green-white-green of the country and singing the national anthem and you’re saying the sports ministry have no say in your football. You say the EFCC has no say in your mismanagement and say the president of the country has no say in what you’re doing. It’s not right.

“You have your budget; you collect money from FIFA and spend anyhow and nobody is asking you any question. I now give you government money and now ask you to explain how spend it and you say am interfering. Police is giving you support, immigration is giving you support, foreign affairs are writing letters for you to get visa and you maintain government should have no say in how you run your football. And when our footballers are stranded in another country it is government people will be attacking for your inefficiency.

“If we want to get football right in Nigeria, we need to have a template for urban and rural football. You need to put things in place by training people to be able to function well. Everybody complains that the government is interfering in football.

“The general feeling is that they should find a better approach for the government to oversee. This masterplan for football addresses the problem,” the Patron of National Schools Sports Federation expressed.

According to Idowu, “Our football is not focus to develop  the sport but just to go and win competitions. If not for U17 World Cup, Nigeria would not have age-grade competitions.

“Whoever is going to be the next President of NFF needs to be mindful of the role they play and how they can influence the rest of the football fraternity. For example, if you want to play for the national team, you must have at least performed at the division level, the regional level before you get to the national team.

Giving an insight into what the masterplan contains, Idowu said: “One of the things that we agreed is that we should start enjoying football and let the children play. We need to get the children, the youths back into football and we need people to start liking football. Let us go back to the grassroots, our local leagues operating optimally again. Let us have the school competitions working again with inter-school competitions, Principal’s Cup and Academicals.

“If you are having people who are stars from schools graduating into divisional leagues and then graduating into the national league, you are going to get followership as more and more people are going to come on board, “he noted.

“The competitive sports should be handled at the state level because of the way Nigeria is-handled by the FA or states associations, while amateur football should be handled at the divisional level and you have recreational like 5-aside. Some people can cross between the two or three categories.

“For each of these there is some form of organisation to administer each of these functions. That is the way it is supposed to be but overtime, because of the cannibalisation of the state we now have YSFON, Academicals, NSSF, Grassroots foundation. NOC and NFF started having their own camps and everything now got in a mess and everybody started going their own the way. And it was purely canibalised. The one that is eventually basically recognised was the NFF, which transformed from NFA.

“The situation led to an ideological struggle which is a function of the approach we take as a country. In some countries they have the bottom-up approach to football pyramid where we have at the bottom the base which is the grassroots.

“In Nigeria we naturally favour football, though we are good at other things but football is the fattest.

They felt football is what gives us prominence. Ninety per cent of the budget they put on the national team, ignoring grassroots development. We got away with when our local league was functioning, but overtime, when you don’t plant but keep on harvesting, eventually you will have nothing left to harvest. The national team began to suffer. What we now have is the football federation junketing Europe to look for players with Nigerian roots to play for the national team. We now found ourselves in a situation where we now beg people to play for Nigeria and it became a total farce.

“We now spend 90 per cent of the football budget on the national team, that ideology is unsustainable. If you look at the metrics in the last seven years, the NFF has spent 15 billion naira.

Government released N15 billion for football over seven years. Why were we buying first-class tickets, giving people $10,000 per day, and sending people to go on trips with 20 officials and things like that when that same money can be spent on 36 states and let the children play?

And what are we getting back in return?” Idowu queried.

 The committee of the 10-year masterplan was inaugurated in November last year by the minister of sports.