Nigeria Content Online

When, a year ago,
our national team was struggling to qualify for the 201O World Cup, our
late President, Musa Yar’Adua, set up a body of experts to assist the
football association in this regard.

This presidential
task force was made of experts in football administration like John
Mastoroudes the founder of Leventis United of Ibadan, one of our great
football teams of the 1980s. Former players Segun Odegbami, Austin
Okocha and Patrick Ekeji, currently Director-General of the National
Sports Commission, NSC, were also members of the task force. It was
headed by Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi, of whom, I confess, I
know little. We finally qualified for the World Cup on the last
possible day.

After we were
eliminated from the World Cup in the first round, the task force
submitted its report to President Goodluck Jonathan. On July 2nd, Mr
Jonathan announced to the world that, on the recommendation of the task
force, he was disbanding the football association and suspending all
our national football teams from international tournaments for two
years. The whole world was shocked, as was Dickson Etuhu, our defensive
midfielder, when Pedro Pinto of CNN interviewed him that evening. Some
people equated the president’s decision to withdrawing from school for
two years a child for failing an exam. Others said it was like cutting
off ones head to cure a headache. Thank God, our president listened to
the pleas of our countrymen and women and rescinded the decision.

Beyond incompetent officials

No one is saying
that our football association is not corrupt or incompetent. However,
our problems could never be solved by insulating ourselves for two
years. FIFA, the world football governing body, would have gladly added
another two years, like the Confederation of African Football did when
Sani Abacha withdrew our team from the Cup of African Nations in 1996.
By the time we come back to the international scene, our football will
be worse off because, due to our low ranking, we will be grouped with
strong teams like Egypt, Ivory-Coast and Ghana for World Cup places.

Imagine how tough
that would be, considering that Tunisia almost snatched the 2010 ticket
from us, like Angola did in 2005. Did the presidential task force
consider who the coach of our national team would be during our
suspension? We would be pariah and any team which played us would be
suspended by FIFA. Which coach worth his salt will like to coach a team
that plays no competitive match for at least two years?

What about our
players who already are going in search of the golden fleece to such
lowly-ranked countries as India and Sudan? Would you blame them if they
shuttled across the border and took up nationalities of countries like
Benin or Niger? How would teams like Enyimba cope with the loss of
revenue from the Champions League? By the way, English clubs were
forced into this position when they were suspended from European
competitions as a result of the hooliganism of Liverpool supporters in
1985. Before then, English sides Liverpool, Nottingham Forest and Aston
Villa had won the Champions Cup every year from 1978 to 1984, except
1983. They were recalled after more than five years on the sidelines
but didn’t win the Champions League until Manchester United did so in
1999. Is it possible that the honourable men of our task force did not
know these possible outcomes of withdrawing our teams from
international competitions? After all, we could reform our football
without pulling out of international competitions for two years. France
did it successfully after they failed to qualify for the 1994 World Cup
and won the next one on home soil, before winning the European
Championship in 2000 for good measure.

No member of the
presidential task force has resigned as result of, or disavowed, their
radical recommendation, so it is safe to say that the decision was
unanimous. So, why would such honourable men mislead our president?

Somehow, I am
reminded of the day we woke up in the late 1980s to read that the great
Leventis United football club had been disbanded. No one saw it coming.
Is John Mastoroudes an impulsive man or does he just like the shock
effect? Did Segun Odegbami and Austin Okocha see it as the quickest way
to achieve their ambition of a place on the board of the football
association? The person most favoured by all the brouhaha is Patrick
Ekeji because the media are not talking about the ministerial visit to
the dilapidated National Stadium earlier in the year and the sorry
state of our National Institute for Sport and other national edifices
under him.

Ekeji’s responsibility

Patrick Ekeji,
playing for Enugu Rangers, was the by far the best right-back in
Nigeria in the late 1970s and was expected to play in that position for
us at the Cup of African Nations which we were to host in 1980. No one
accused him of a lack of patriotism when he suddenly left to better
himself by going abroad to study. It was the same Ekeji who, in 2002,
engineered the removal of the coaching crew of the national team due to
the insubordination of the players. Or was it because they were not
patriotic enough to beat Senegal in the semi-final?

If we are to
rebound like the French football team of 1998, a lot depends on the
national sport commission. The French did it by setting up a training
centre which the English and the rest of Europe are trying to emulate.
They did it by improving the standard of their coaching. The ball is in
Ekeji’s court. He should read the French blueprint. Is he up to the
task? So far Ekeji has proved to be more interested in interfering in
other people’s jobs, like that of national team coach Shuaibu Amodu’s,
than doing his. The success of our sports, not just football, depends
on you.

Eguavoen is based in Belgium.