Nigeria Content Online

In this our day
when access to information has become so easy that even seven-year olds
clutch Blackberry phones, the way their counterparts a few years ago
cuddled Barbie dolls, it is amazing to find the level of backwardness
that exists some of our sports institutions.

The NUGA Games, Nigeria’s equivalent of the American Collegiate Games, is one of the oldest sporting competitions in Nigeria.

The Games, which
started forty-five years ago is in its 23rd edition with the finest
athletes in the Nigerian university system currently at the University
of Benin competing for honours. On Thursday one of our reporters was
doing a story on the games. He wanted to get on NUGA’s website to get
more information to enrich the story. He searched in vain.

NUGA didn’t have a
website! It was simply shocking. The best he got was about two website
dedicated to past games. For me, it was embarrassing to find that an
organisation that for four decades organised games that has produced
Commonwealth Games, Athletics World Championships and Olympic Games
medallists, does not have a site where anyone seeking information about
any aspect of the games can find it?

The question then
naturally arises: what has the secretariat of NUGA been doing these
many decades? How much does it cost to build a website that they have
found it difficult to have one? Or is it that the officials at the
secretariat are so ‘old school’ that they do not consider having one to
be of importance?

And this disease does not afflict NUGA alone.

Take the Nigeria
Football Federation, the body saddled with the responsibility of
administering football in Nigeria. The website it has managed to put up
after years of heckling is nothing but a joke for an organisation,
which superintends over the Nigerian arm of the world’s most popular
sport. What it clearly shows is that the years of mingling of NFF
officials with the technologically savvy moguls of FIFA, has not rubbed
off positively on them.

Before putting down
my thoughts on this piece, I had tried visiting the site
(www.nigeriaff.com) but found it difficult to access their home page. I
had to take the indirect path of visiting sections of the site
displayed on the Google search engine. What I found there, given
developments in Nigerian football in the last one year, was heart
rending.

You would find for
instance, that nearly one year after he was impeached from office, Sani
Lulu is still listed as NFF President with Bolaji Ojo’Oba still
Secretary General despite having been sent on compulsory leave last
year.

Trapped in the Stone Age

You would also find
on the NFF website that despite the convulsions that have taken place
in the Nigeria Premier League since Oyuiki Obaseki’s exit from the
body, the Benin chief popularly referred to as the ‘moving train’ is
still presented as chairman of the NPL.

If all this is not
disturbing, then I wonder what is. Which brings me to the question:
does Aminu Maigari, NFF President, ever find time to browse the site to
see what’s offered on it? Does he even realise that the NFF website
should be the window through which foreigners can get a glimpse of the
goings on in Nigerian football?

It is clear from
the state of the site that he does not, which quite plainly, is tragic
and begins to make us understand why after four years as Director of
Finance of the federation, he did not know how many teams played in the
national league.

Before visiting the
NFF website, I had first browsed through the website of the Zambia
Football federation (www.fazfootball.com). I was surprised first of all
by the layout before being equally impressed by the amount of
information available on it. With up to date news about happenings on
the Zambian football scene, a first time visitor is encouraged to come
back.

If Maigari cannot
ensure that a simple matter as a website should function then what hope
have we of him steering Nigerian football away from the muddy waters in
which it has been grounded in the last one year?

When men rush to get into public office without having the faintest
idea what they are going there to do, then embarrassments like these
clearly become inevitable. We need to start cleaning up our act. We
cannot continue to make ourselves the laughing stock of the world.