It’s no more news that the Federal government has banned Nigeria from playing International competitions for the next two years pending a probe of expenses made by the NFF and probable injunction if found wanting. I know all this is coming from the backlash suffered by the National team in South Africa 2010.
As much as I think this is the right thing to do, I am a bit reluctant in applauding this route because of our lackadaisical approach to change. After 2years would we still have the same crooked structure of appointment into NFF? Accountability is important still. How will this be addressed even after the spring cleaning session, otherwise overtime I suspect we will be back to status quo? Maybe funds should be raised from the private-sector (at least FIFA can’t fault companies wanting to know how their monies are spent?) rather than by the government?! Maybe, we should even ask FIFA to take up providing funds for football administration all together, what'ya think? ;)
The most corrupt yet unaccountable sector in Nigeria’s economy is the civil service (even if I say so myself!) and the NFF board members are (s) elected from that platform so make your own deductions. Granted, we are a country of talents abound but when appropriate authorities refuse to do the proper thing by scouting and harnessing youths from the streets who are hungry for money and success. Youths who would draw blood for any inkling of results (or goals as in this case) as much as they can muster because their future and that of their family depends on it. Instead in Nigeria my country, like in every other sphere of our lives, we collect bribes to have players on our squad or even do quota-sharing into teams not considering that the player might not be appropriate for the role in question instead of playing capable hands for the jobs.
I can almost bet that we wouldn’t have made the qualifiers for the next World Cup in 2014 anyway at the rate NFF is being run. Considering that we all know that age group competitions are not played by those of the appropriate age range in Nigeria, what are we to lose from this ban anyway…? Definitely a little less than we imagine considering the unnecessary monetary loss we’ve experienced thus far. I cringe to imagine that ₦900million has “disappeared” towards this World Cup campaign. Now imagine these same monies spent appropriately (“appropriately” being the key word) on other ailing sports?
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