Nigeria Content Online

The
year 2010 was a phenomenal one for football in the world. Easily, the
most outstanding spectacle was the World Cup, which held in South Africa
between June and July.

As far as
competitions go, it was a resounding success both in terms of
organisation, quality of football played and returns on investment.

I was particularly
excited by the job done by Danny Jordaan and his team at the organising
committee. Their painstaking attention to detail eventuated in the
organisation of one of the best tournaments ever shutting up for good,
the army of critics in Europe who not pleased with FIFA’s decision to
hand hosting rights to South Africa, had embarked on a campaign of
denigration of the ability of the country to secure lives of visitors
given what they claimed was the high rate of crime.

All that is history now as the sweet after taste of that memorable tournament will linger for some time to come.

Sadly for us here in
Nigeria our football landscape in 2010 was pockmarked by crises. For me
and a lot of Nigerians, this year was one in which football
administrators finally revealed themselves to be utterly selfish,
egotistic and incapable of serving this country in a professional
manner.

While their
counterparts elsewhere were busy fine-tuning strategies to develop the
game in their countries, our administrators spent the better part of
2010 squabbling over trifles. It was a huge shame seeing football
grounded while men and women entrusted with the responsibility of
administering the game demeaning themselves in a way that degraded not
the game but the country as a whole.

Personal ambition
proved for them to be more important than the tasking of seeing that
Nigeria’s image be burnish international through qualitative performance
of its national teams in international football competitions. The
biggest culprit in this regard is undoubtedly Sani Lulu, deposed
President of the Nigeria Football Federation.

The former football
federation boss consumed by his ambition to get re-elected as head of
Nigeria’s football governing body abandoned completely his job of
administering the game and instead wasted precious time doctoring
statutes of the NFF and pruning the number of delegates eligible to vote
in federation’s elections in order to facilitate his unholy agenda.

His nefarious scheme
collapsed like a pack of cards after the Super Eagles, which he had
neglected to prepare adequately for the World Cup performed well below
expectation of Nigerians thus paving way for his impeachment by his
comrades in-arms.

It was a shame
really when Nigerians became privy to the notice of impeachment served
on Lulu and they discovered how cronyism and nepotism had stifled due
process at the federation with the depose football boss alleged to have
freely spent public funds on friends and family members.

More than scandals

Aside Lulu’s
misadventure, Nigerians were also witness to the shameless manner those
who succeeded him flouted the laws of the land preferring instead to
listen to FIFA when commonsense clearly dictated otherwise. They proved
to be no better than the man they had conspired to remove from office in
the way they disregarded due process.

It also emerged in
2010 that in terms of integrity our football administrators are
painfully inadequate. This clearly reflected in the treatment of Lulu.
Though the former NFA boss clearly deserved what he got, the action of
men who until the last minute had partaken off the spoils in singling
him and two others for condemnation, showed just how irresponsible and
unreliable they are. Whether Nigerian football will be safe in the hands
of these men is a matter for serious debate.

In 2010 we were also
made to suffer the indignity of having our country’s name mentioned in
an international football scandal where one of our football
administrators was said to have asked for bribe to vote for the United
States of America ahead of the announcement of the bid, which was
eventually won by Russia.

Thankfully, for us
the year was not just about these selfish men. It was also a year our
women tried to salvage something of our battered football pride. It was
the year of the Falconets who against the odds, went all the way to the
final of the FIFA U-20 Women’s World cup where they lost to a better
prepared German team.

2010 was also the
year of the Flamingoes. Our U-17 women’s team, playing a delectable
brand of football, fought their way to the quarter-final where they lost
not to a better Korean team but to inexperience having not been
properly exposed to quality international friendly matches going into
the tournament.

Finally, 2010 was also the year, the Super Falcons, long neglected
and much mistreated by our football authorities gave Nigerian its only
international football triumph.