Adokie Amiesimaka is one man who never calls a spade by any other name than a spade. Many of the impostors running our football and their cohorts feel he should see evil and speak nothing about it. They have called him several names from disgruntled, unpatriotic to a jealous critic who never sees anything good in Nigerian football.

Amiesimaka was a school boy(University undergraduate) player for the Green Eagles who went to win the country’s first Nations Cup on home soil in Lagos in 1980. Since after he retired from the national team, he has continuously preached against the use of  over aged players in the junior teams, stressing that the practice was injurious to the country’s football. But what did he get, abuses from the football administrators.

At last what Amiesimaka has been stressing has come out from one of the participants, Victor Ikpeba, an ex Eagles like the former chairman of Sharks FC. According to Ikpeba, who incidentally is in one of the NFF’s committees, Nigeria has been fielding over aged players in junior competitions and it is now taking its toll on her football development. He has not said he was misquoted since it was published.

Ikepba is right just like Amiesimaka. If you doubt it, then answer this question. Where are our soccer prodigies like Femi Opabunmi, Stanley Okoro and Chrisantus Macaulay who shone so much in the FIFA U-17 competitions not too long ago?

Before them, you had Dimeji Lawal and Phillip Osondu who mesmerized the U-17 World Cup in 1987 in the then USSR. From the 1989 set to Scotland, Ikpeba was the only one who played for a long time in big European clubs and he said it was because he used his real age.

What else does the NFF need to know they were the mischievous and unpatriotic Nigerians who wanted a short cut to victory and therefore should tender an unreserved apology to Amiesimaka which should be published in same national newspapers through which they castigated him. Period!