•speaks on improved Nigeria’s Premier League.
•Says Keshi enjoyed support more than any Nigerian coach.

Vice-President of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) and Chairman of the League Management Company, Shehu Dikko admits that the NFF stands to lose more than Sunday Oliseh if the Super Eagles fail to fly under the guidance of the former Dortmund and Ajax defensive midfielder, JOHN EGBOKHAN reports

Shehu Dikko

Our once great league crashed in standards and everything other thing. But it is improving now. Your comment?

It is about doing the right things at the right time and getting people to the same direction. The entire stakeholders in the league, the clubs, the players, the club chairmen, the league body, the NFF are collective in the direction to change things. The position of the LMC is very clear and that is the reason the league is doing very well. We are happy that people are happy with where we are today but we are introducing many innovations to drive the league. It is a complete departure from was happening in past years and it is working and we hope to keep it that way.

Who is driving the change process in the league? Is it the LMC, clubs, players, NFF or referees?

The LMC is driving the change. We are the change agents of the league. And of course, we have managed to get all our clubs to pull in the same direction. And our sponsors are also included. So everything is coming together at the same time because the clubs can see our honesty and vision and they have keyed into it and that is why things are changing.

Is this just a stop-gap measure or has the process come to stay?

It is a carefully thought-out vision. If you look at my personoal website, since 2004, I made pubic my comments and vision on how to make the league better. And that is basically what is driving this process at the moment. It is the vision, objectives and the capacity to drive the change process that is making things work. And of course, our sponsors have helped us a lot because money is vital in football sponsorship.

We have seen you sanction referees, players, coaches, match commissioners, club chairmen. What emboldened you?

It is part of the game. Everybody has to work in the same direction. We are not doing it for personal reasons. We are not doing it because we hate anybody. Before we sanction anybody, we call the person and explain why you have to be sanctioned. That is the style. We have to explain why the rules have to be applied.

The rules are very clear. Our rules are on our website. They are in the public domain. Anybody can go and download it. We are governed by the rule of law. We at the centre have always been talking about transparency and doing things the right way, so that everything will work fine. And that is what we are demonstrating with the league.

When the Group Managing Director of Eunisell, Chika Ikenga talked about the passion his eight year old son has for Nigerian league, rather than the English Premier League and how it stimulated his interest to sponsor Sharks FC, what went through your mind?

It was heart-warming. We monitor our clubs, going to league venues to monitor the matches, know the kind of people coming and we have the visuals to support this position that things have changed. This last weekend, we saw an 80 year-old woman, with her grand children watch Shooting Stars match. Today, young girls and boys in the universities are going to the stadium to watch our matches. We get an average of five to ten thousand fans at venues.

Look at the number of fans that watched Rangers and Enyimba in Enugu. People are beginning to believe in this product. It is our own product and only Nigerians can develop this product. Nobody can do it but us. I am happy to hear a private company executive confirm it. As Chairman of the league, I know the kind of calls I receive on daily basis. People you would not think would know what is going on want to advise and get on the train. It is brilliant but we have not gotten there yet. We have a long way to go.

We have to keep improving by the day and keep sustaining where we are are. Where we are today is the minimum benchmark. Tomorrow, we set another benchmark. The next day, we set another benchmark. That is how to develop the league. The Premier League in England, the Bundesliga, the Spanish Liga are looking for ways to develop, so who are we to say that oh because things are getting a bit good now, we are happy.

Okay, we are happy, we are excited because we are seeing the results of our efforts but we have to keep sustaining this, by improving. Football is a very dynamic game. It does not stagnant. We have to latch onto that.

You are known to be a marketing person, who is suddenly driving a change process that is more of managerial. How flexible or challenging has this task been for you? And what for you is the key factor needed to get a sponsor to support teams in the league?

The sponsor has to see that he will get value for investing in the league. He has to see that the brand he will associate himself with is not a brand that will taint his products. He wants a brand that will drive his business, commercially and otherwise. Exposure can make people to come to his business. He needs a brand that will give him public sympathy.

Clubs have to, at all times, show sponsors that their product will provide those benefits to them. Once you can do these, then the sponsors are always willing to come in . Last year, Nigerian companies spent N150b on marketing communications. If our football gets it right, we will get 75% of that money.

Football industry is the biggest globally and that is what we are targeting. We have not started at all . We are aiming to see all our clubs raking in billions of naira from private investment and support. That is when we can say we are happy.

The last Super Eagles coach, Stephen Keshi gave opportunities to players in the local league. What do you want the new coach, Sunday Oliseh to do when dealing with home-based players?

Well, I expect the same thing from Oliseh. As Chairman of the LMC, I’m the Vice-President of the NFF and I’m also involved at the level of our football. I was involved in the discussion to employ Oliseh and it is the same message. In fact, this time, we expect to do it even better. That is why a coach who knows the league very well, Salisu Yusuf has been mandated as the one in charge of that process because he knows the league, having coached there for more than 12 years.

Oliseh is in charge of the team. We are even trying to raise the stakes by making the Under-23 a wholly Nigerian-based players team. The boy who scored our two goals against Congo last weekend, Junior Ajayi plays for Shooting Stars. Even the Super Eagles, when you call the strikers in the team, the first name on the lips of many is Gbolahan Salami, who plays for Warri Wolves.

We are quite excited and my vision is a day where we will see all the 11 players in the Super Eagles coming from our league and when the foreign-based will stay on the bench. That is the vision and we will get there because the players are happy to come and play here and we are putting the structures on the ground. Once we sort out the welfare issues, we will get there.

We want players who are having issues with their clubs in Europe to come down here to play and the LMC will pay them. We have done that with Sani Kaita with Enyimba and just this weekend that passed, I offered the same thing to the Under-23 players, who are playing for Samson Siasia but don’t have clubs or are still waiting to sign for clubs. I told them the league will pay them. We will even help them to get clubs in the league, so that they can add their value to their league before they can sort out their future.

For you to pay all these players means you are swimming in money?

Not. It is part of the elite players’ programme. It is not for everybody. And it is not to pay them huge money per se. We pay them something that is reasonable for them to play in the local league. Because if we have any player who is playing for the national team and playing for a club here, anywhere the team goes, fans come to the stadium and the sponsors are happy. It’s a win-win thing. It’s not about the money but about improving the brand value of the league and engaging our best players to keep doing what they love doing until such a time when they are ready to go abroad to seek greener pastures.

Last week, the NFF President, Amaju Pinnick listed you amongst the four persons who were condemned to take our football out of its current poor state. What is your disposition to this?

Of course, I support him and he knows why he said so. We are working as a group and share the same vision. Nobody knows it all. We share ideas to see how we can move forward. At this junction, he is very right to say that. In the future, things might change. If we, with all our dedication and vision cannot get it right, so where is the hope for our football? We are young men, the future of this country belongs to us, so we have to do what we have to do so that posterity will be kind to us. Our ideas, knowledge, vision and experience are good reasons for him to say that and I support him wholly.

But Nigerians fear that you people running the NFF will likely not give Sunday Oliseh the free hand to succeed as Eagles coach. Their fear stems from how Keshi was treated by you people and they feel that Oliseh won’t escape such treatment?

No, no, no no. It is unfair to say that. Did Keshi say that somebody in the NFF imposed any player on him? Or treated him badly? Knowing Keshi for who he is, if anybody had imposed any player on him, he would have shouted to the high heavens. All that is a non-starter. NFF has gone beyond that. Keshi was not treated badly.

He got the support no Nigerian coach ever got from the Maigari time till he left. We decided to hire Oliseh. We are more determined to ensure that he succeeds even than Oliseh because we are the ones who brought him. Nobody forced us to bring him. We thought his vision and our vision had a convergence somewhere, so we spoke to him and he accepted to come and work with us. We bought into his vision and he bought into ours.

And for the first time, we have a Director General in the National Sports Commission, Al Hassan Yakmut, who understands how football works and did not interfere with the process because he has been in the system for long and knows how these things work.

He did not interfere and therefore, we have no reason not to support Oliseh and ensure he succeeds because if he fails, we fail and if he succeeds, we succeed. We have more to lose if he fails with the Eagles because it is our decision to bring him and once you take a position, you have to accept the blame. People are happy with the decision to appoint Oliseh Eagles coach. Even sponsors are coming to us for the sake of Oliseh.