Super Eagles technical adviser, Rohr was put on the hot seat last week when he appeared on Channnels Television sports programme on the state of the Nigerian local football league.
Understandably, the German struggled in his response, short of writing it off. Realising he is an employee in a foreign country, he quickly moderated his assessment by submitting that Nigerian local league is good but could be better, citing the Tunisian league as being of higher standard.
Still refusing to admit that the state of our local league is responsible for his failure to include home based players in his selection, except Ezenwa’s recent inclusion, Rohr said countries normally use their best players. One of such countries, according to him, is Cameroon that featured only foreign based in their recent encounters with Nigeria.
The technical adviser must be reminded that 90 percent of the makeup of the national teams of South Africa, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, and even Zambia his next huddle in the fight for World Cup ticket, are drawn from their local leagues.
The German is neither responsible for the rot in the system nor should he be the one to pass judgment. It’s our duty to do a soul searching and be honest enough to admit that we need to step up the standard of our local league.
First, congratulations to Plateau United for emerging this year’s champions of the Nigeria Professional Football League. And for the clubs that escaped relegation, happy survival.
Truth be told, the organization of the league previously was better than the one that just ended. While we wait for the League management to do a postmortem of the period under review, there are clear indices that we are not making progress.
Yet, those managing our league are honourable men. Starting with Nduka Irabor, a distinguished journalist and former member of Nigeria’s House of Representatives to Shehu Dikko, an urbane successful businessman and Salisu Abubakar, a thorough bred technocrat. These are not men you can buy their consciences with money from what I know about them. Their exposure and ingenuity are also not in doubt. So why is it difficult to consolidate on the gains of the recent past?
Remarkably, there are two-prong dimensions to the retardation of our league; the activities of stakeholders, namely, the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, the Referees, and the Club owners on one side and the League Management Company on the other.
The leadership of the NFF gives the impression that the success of the local league is not their business. Otherwise why is the soccer governing body looking the other way while allegations of corruption and compromise continue to trail the activities of the Referees Appointment Committee even by some members of the committee against its own leadership?
Officiating remains the major sore point of the league management. How can you justify the award of 12 penalties in two weeks of the closing stage of the season? Recently, a Nigerian referee Ferdinand Udoh, was at center of a World Cup qualifier where the host, South Africa lost at home to Cape Verde. His performance was world class. For sure, there are many Udohs among Nigerian referees especially while on duty outside the shores of Nigeria. The question is; why can’t they replicate same performance at home?
This is where Club managers must be put in the dock. Who is behind the malady in the system? Is it the referees, the Appointment committee, or the club managers?
On its part, the LMC appears helpless on the excuse that it doesn’t appointment referees, even when it recommends referees and clubs for punishment, the bulk still stops on the table of the parent body, the NFF.
But there are so many indecisions and inconsistencies in the operations of the LMC. Again, the alibi is that they can only apply what is in their Rules book, albeit, anyway they like it.
Interestingly the LMC has identified the challenges hindering its operations. These include; the inability to appoint referees, the strict adherence to the Rules book, and the readiness by club managers to compromise the match officials. The LMC can now address the issues by; engaging the leadership of the NFF on referees’ appointment, rewrite the Rules book, apply the rules fairly, punish violence and bribery appropriately and adequately, and more importantly discourage government ownership of clubs.
If club managers are not getting spoils from government houses, there will be no funds to offer match officials.
Let our football administrators think less of elections and concentrate more on leaving legacies. Our league needs reform if we must produce players for the national teams.
Till next week, keep attacking.