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On
Tuesday practically the entire football community in Nigeria converged
on Portharcourt, Rivers State for the Africa Independent Television
(AIT) Football Awards.

For me it was a momentous occasion made even more remarkable for the professional manner the show was organised.

Not in a long while had I seen in one place football personalities like I witnessed at the awards.

As I scanned some
of the faces at the event – Adokiye Amiesimaka, Jonathan Ogunfere,
Sunny Badru, Mitchell Obi, Isidoreh Oduah, Fabio Olanipekun, Mumini
Alao, Paul Bassey and a host of other ageing and dynamic young and
progressive sports administrators and journalists, I couldn’t help but
wonder how Nigerian football came to this sad pass that it presently is
in.

How can we have
such a wealth of human capital, individuals knowledgeable about the
game and with a burning passion to boot and have Nigerian Nigeria
football prostrate at the valley of mediocrity? How did the charlatans
who presently superintend the game manage to find their way to the
‘Glass House’?

Anyway, this piece
is not about them but about the significance of the AIT Awards and how
it can help in rejuvenating the game despite the shenanigans of its
administrators.

Apart from seeing
the ‘Golden Oldies’ of Nigerian football, the awards also afforded me
the opportunity to interact with the young generation of talent
represented by members of the Super Falcons who turned up for the
event. Clearly, the players were over the moon to be invited to the
event. Looking at them from a distance you could even sense it from
their body language.

The beauty of the
awards for me lies in the fact that a time we are facing what seems
like an interregnum in the administration of football in Nigeria, a
period when the players who are the raison d’être of football
administration are largely ignored by both the football federation and
Nigeria Premier League (NPL), a media organisation is taking the lead
in recognising the toil of footballers whose means of livelihood is
being endangered by a few heartless individuals.

Inspiring our youngsters

While the main
award, the Footballer of the Year Award presented to Vincent Enyeama is
important, the most important award of the night for me was that of the
Young Player of the Year won by Kenneth Kumbur. At a time many Nigerian
youngsters think of heading to Europe as soon as they can learn how to
pass the ball, the award will encourage a lot of them to concentrate on
building football careers here, a development that will help restore
vitality to the Nigerian league.

In the same vein
will the award of Footballer of the Year (National) inspire our premier
league players to excel knowing that the knocks they receive on a
weekly basis would not be in vain.

I congratulate AIT
for the initiative. With continued diligence and hard work, the award
may one day become a reference point beyond our shores. For the Nigeria
Football Federation (NFF), the award should be a wakeup call.
Thankfully, its President, Aminu Maigari, was at the awards and soaked
in every detail. He even made some comments about how the award can
encourage players to excel. It is all very well to mouth platitudes,
the question is, how does Maigari and his colleagues in the board of
the NFF hope to pull the game up from its bootstraps? What magic wand
do they have to re-invent the game in Nigeria after years of maul from
the buccaneers who have administered in the last few years?

I salute AIT for
their effort and hope that they sustain the awards. Clearly, to pull
off an event of that magnitude required great sacrifice and
circumspection on the part of all-from Aisha Falode who worked round
the clock to ensure that there was seamless transition of events the
moment guests started arriving Portharcourt, to Paul Bassey and his
team of selectors for the awards.

One advice I have for them is to consider instituting an award for meritorious service to Nigerian football.

There are a lot of former footballers and administrators alive who
deserve this award for their contributions to the development of the
game. Men like Badru, Ogunfere, John Ojidoh, Mahmoud Kadiri, Linus
Mbah, Christian Chukwu, Segun Odegbami, Emmanuel Okala, to name a few
of them, need to be appreciated for their inputs into the game.