The Bible describes King Solomon as the wisest man in the world. And the true test of his wisdom was demonstrated in the story of two women, each laying claim to a baby as narrated in 1 Kings 3:16-28.

Again in Proverbs 25:14 Solomon wrote that anyone who boasts of giving something he doesn’t have is like clouds and wind without rain.

In essence such a person is not better than a fool. Unfortunately that is what Nigeria as a country has turned itself into.

Why on earth will Nigeria be exporting electricity when it is in dire need of it for both local consumption and for export to earn revenue?

Bringing this to sports, it is not in doubt that our various sports federations are in need of technical expertise to nurture our raw talents as well as the established ones into world beaters.

Rather than look inwards for these technical hands that we have, we ignore them and therefore allow them go to other countries to render the same service.

We prefer to go outside to hire coaches, some not up to the standard of their Nigerian counterparts, and pay them outrageous salaries.

I remember when our weightlifting federation was always going to Eastern Europe, particularly Bulgaria to get coaches for our national teams.

That was when we had the Bulgarian Ivan Ganev even though he was frustrated at the end. He always complained of paucity of funds to train his athletes, stressing that countries were catching up with Nigeria in the spot and warned that if nothing was done, Nigeria would lose her position as a powerhouse weightlifting.

And he was right. Egypt, Algeria and Cameroon started challenging us in weightlifting and today we are no longer number one in the sport in Africa.

In wrestling, the void in getting a technical expert to oversee the sport was filled by Nigerian-Canadian Olympic golf medallist, Dr. Daniel Igali who became the president of the federation and has ensured the wrestlers lacked nothing, including constant participation in championships which has put them among the best in the world going for the Paris Olympics beginning later this month.

Igali didn’t only rise to the top of wrestling as an athlete, he equipped himself with the technique of the sport taking advantage of his Canadian citizenship which exposed him to the best of everything required to make a great athlete.

As a result, he has been impacting the knowledge to the Nigerian coaches he identified and equally joins them to train the wrestlers. So he doesn’t need to look for any foreign coach to handle this athletes and he has done it for close to 12 years now as president of the wrestling federation.

We have other former athletes in other sports doing so well too after retirement but rather than court them to assist in developing their sport, our administrators look beyond them for foreigners.

In 2013, the sports ministry bypassed the Athletics Federation of Nigeria, AFN to hire two Americans, Annie Taylor and Eric Campbell to tinker with our athletes preparatory to the Rio Olympics in 2016.

This action was queried by former AFN president, Dan Ngerem who said both Americans could not be classified as world class coaches as they had not produced any recognizable star athlete at the time.

Meanwhile, there were Nigerians in the field but who were put under these Americans getting peanuts as salaries while the foreigners got juicy packages in foreign currency.

Today however, one of the Nigerians overlooked by the sports ministry, Aniefiok Udo-Ubong has been recognized by another country, Saudi Arabia who are making genuine efforts in all areas of sports to become a force to reckon with in the world.

But he was ignored by the AFN until Lagos state gave him the opportunity to help groom their young talents who were in turn poached by big spending states interested only in winning medals during the biennial National Sports Festival than discover and develop their own talents.

Is it in football that we lack knowledgeable Nigerians? No. There are a couple that could fit in and could do better than the foreigners the NFF are always junketing the world looking for.

We have Michael Emenalo who can fit in both as a coach or a manager of our football league having paid his dues variously with a United States Soccer Academy as Director of player development, Chelsea as Football Club as technical director or Monaco of France as Sporting Director.

Today he is the Sports Director of the Saudi Pro League which is now attracting big name players from all over the world.

Back home, the managers of our sports and football in particular don’t see or acknowledge these accomplishments of one of theirs and see how they can lure him home to support in rejuvenating the game here.

Apart from Emenalo, we also have some others who are making in-roads in other countries like

Seyi Olofinjana and Sone Aluko, both of who had their playing career in England with different clubs.

Olofinjana after retiring from active football worked at Wolverhampton Wanderers Academy from 2015-2019 from where he joined Swiss side, Grasshoppers of Zurich as their Sporting Director in 2021 until 2022.

Aluko, after his playing career that took him through Birmingham City to Aberdeen, Blackpool, Rangers, Hull City, Fulham, Reading and then Ipswich Town from where he retired last May, only last week, was appointed as one of the first-team coaches for Ipswich which gained promotion to the Premier League at the end of last season.

With all the Nigerians empowering themselves in football management, isn’t it surprising that the NFF is still searching outside for the Messiah to rescue our football? For the NFF, charity begins abroad.