By Patrick Omorodion

“Fela, you don come again! I never come again”. That is the first line in Afrobeat legend, Fela Anikulapo’s great song ‘Unknown Soldier’. 

I am starting this piece this way today because I know people who will say ‘Omorodion don come again’. Yes, I will never get tired of saying truth to authority until they start doing things right.

Right from my days in the defunct Concord newspapers when Dr. Amos Adamu took control of our sports, I have been saying it that our sports was on the reverse gear. Rather than take a painstaking look at what I was saying, Adamu’s loyalists called me names, ostensibly telling him to ignore me rather than advise him to change his style of administration.

Many years after his exit from power, the wrong pegs he forced into our square holes are grinding or have ground our sports to standstill or have put it in reverse gear.

I said back then that the glory Dr Adamu was taking for the little progress we were making in many sports, particularly athletics where we rubbed shoulders with almighty United States were the handiworks of men like Isaac Akioye, Jerry Enyeazu, Abraham Ordia and Awoture Eleaya, among others.

The structure they put in place churned out many young athletes who Adamu inherited and Nigeria depended on to make the progress recorded back then.  All through the Adamu era, no conscious effort was made to plan for the future, institute a proper grassroot development programme to discover young talents and nurture them to stardom.

No programme to train those who will train the discovered athletes. And as expected, when the athletes started aging, their performances dipped and the country’s  fortunes also dipped.

Technical officials were equally not prepared for assignments either by the sports ministry or the Nigeria Olympic Committee, NOC which got grants from the International Olympic Committee, IOC for such.

The few of them who inched their way into African or world reckoning got there by engaging themselves in courses which they paid for from their pockets. Many could not and so their development or rise was stunted. 

In football coaching for example, I remember few coaches like the late Shaibu Amodu  who went for a few courses in Brazil to keep himself abreast with latest tactics in football management. It paid him because he started making waves in Africa, confronting north African football teams that used to be the Archilles heels of Nigerian teams. That was in his days with the BCC Lions of Gboko with which he won the then African Cup Winners Cup title in 1990 and got to the final in 1991 but lost 4-5 aggregate to Power Dynamos of Zambia. 

Amodu had earlier broken the jinx of the FA Cup by being the first person to lead a Northern team, the same BCC Lions  to win it in 1989. It was not a surprise that he also became the first indigenous coach to qualify Nigeria for the World Cup before his friend and partner, Stephen Keshi, also late, repeated the feat in 2014. He remains the only coach that qualified Nigeria for two World Cups, 2002 and 2010.

Others like Austin Eguavoen, Samson Siasia, Emmanuel Amuneke, etc. have followed suit but the number is nothing to write home about.

Coming to refereeing, football referees come first with a few others in other sports like table tennis. In table tennis, a sports journalist, Ranti Lajide worked his way up to become a renowned International Table Tennis Federation, ITTF umpire that officiated in the Olympics, Commonwealth Games and World Championships. He was never sponored on any course. His was self development.

In football we had Nigerians who worked hard to obtain their FIFA badges. Men like Festus Okubule, Linus Mba, Sonny Badru, Alex Mana, Emmanuel Obafemi, Olufunmi Olaniyan and Emmanuel Imiere,  among others. We equally had women like Jamila Buhari, the first in this category, Princess Ime Udoka, Edith Nwakere, Faith Irabor and Bola Abidoye, among others.  However, none of these men and women were ever invited to officiate at the senior World Cup for men and women.

A sizeable number however officiated in Africa in the Nations Cup and club Championships but gradually, their invitation reduced and totally stopped, especially among the male referees.

It is not a surprise that FIFA recently released a list of female referees to officiate at the Women’s World Cup later in the year in Australia and New Zealand with Mali, Togo, Zambia, Morocco, South Africa, Rwanda, Cameroon and Mauritius listed. Shockingly no Nigerian was listed.

The reason for this dwindling fortunes of Nigerian referees may not be far fetched. The Nigeria Football Federation, NFF which owns the leagues these referees officiate in don’t offer them any opportunity to upgrade themselves through refresher courses. The referees too don’t bother to sponsor themselves to such courses. 

In other climes where football has grown and is a serious business, refereeing is not a full-time job but a hobby. It is so because their football bodies don’t want referees to depend on officiating for their livelihood as it could encourage corruption among them.

Not so in Nigeria where refereeing has become their main job for survival. That is why football clubs are able to compromise them to influence matches in their favour.

This in turn gives our Premier League an unworthy champion every year, leading to poor performance whenever they represent us in the continent. 

To address this issue of clubs compromising referees, the Interim Management Committee, IMC headed by Gbenga Elegbeleye has decided that clubs will no longer pay referees but the IMC, especially with the abridged league it has factored in to end in May just to realign the Nigerian Premier Football League with the other leagues around the world.

Will it be sustained after the IMC leaves in May by the new body that will take over or will the managers of football return it to the old ways. For now, it is a million-dollar question as fingers remain crossed.