Nigerian football paying price for getting basics wrong — Yemi Idowu

Against the backdrop of the crisis rocking the Nigeria Football Federation, football administrator Yemi Idowu called for sweeping reforms from the grassroots to the national level, in this INTERVIEW with ‘TANA AIYEJINA

As a member of the 10-year football plan panel, are you surprised at the catastrophe that has hit Nigeria football and its administrators?

No, I’m not surprised. I think it’s unfortunate that it has happened, but we’re now taking corrective steps. And it’s very important that as we take these corrective steps, we don’t make the same mistake again. So, the people who were in charge before, we have to thank them for their efforts. They’ve tried their best. And it’s now for us to move forward and not forget the past, and move on. But the next step now is not to make the same mistake again. Football is actually very easy. The first thing to do is try and enjoy your football. You don’t have to win at all costs. Make sure you invest in the football and you get your return. But if you don’t invest, you don’t do the work and you think you’ll get a return, this is what’s going to happen.

The Federal Government has instituted reforms in the sports sector as well. What’s your assessment of the government’s drive to improve the fortunes of the country’s football?

Yes, this government has put more money into football than all the previous governments put together. That’s a fact. Go and check it. If you add up all the allocations put into sports before 2023, it’s not up to what this government has put in between 2023 and 2026. Mark my words. Go and check that anyway. It’s a fact.

So, what kind of reforms are you looking forward to seeing in Nigerian football?

The reform is there; they just have to follow what has been recommended. And I’ve said it many times, Nigerian football must be broken down into local football. If you can have your local football functioning, your state football will work well. If your state football is working well, your regional football will work well. If your regional football is working well, your national football will work well. How can we go to the African U-17 competition and we don’t have a Nigerian U-17 competition? How can you have a Nigerian U-17 competition when you don’t have a state U-17 competition? How can you have state U-17 competition if you don’t have local government under-17 competition? That is just it. But if people want to sit down in Abuja and invite anybody that you don’t know who they are and you want to gather them for four weeks and go and play the U-17 African Cup and you expect another result, it’s not possible. Show me where a U-16 or 16-year-old today is playing on a full-size pitch, week in, week out. Show me. And you want him in six months’ time to go and play in the African Championship and in 12 months’ time to play in the World Championship. It’s not possible. So, they just have to go back to the basics. Anybody who calls himself chairman and has never played football before, doesn’t run a football team, doesn’t manage a football player, cannot deliver football for you.

What’s your take on the recent development as it concerns the board of the NFF resigning?

Again, I must repeat, we must thank every single person who has been in the NFF in the past. Whether they are very successful or not successful, we must thank them. We must make it very clear that some people did not do well and they won competitions. And some people did well and did not win competitions. So, don’t confuse the two things. In terms of effort, you have to just thank them for what they’ve done. I don’t want us to victimise anybody. Let’s thank them because I’m aware of the effort many of them put in. But overall, the result was not what we expected. You must disconnect the resignation from performance. Please, let all of us understand that. I think that the NFF president has done the best thing ever for Nigerian football through his personal sacrifice. For that personal sacrifice he made, you must commend him. When the time comes, you will commend him for what he’s done, because he has given the opportunity for reform to happen, and that reform cannot happen without him in the background. So, we will all still need him in the background to help with the reform. We also need the previous presidents to help in the background so that FIFA knows we are serious. We don’t want two factions, three factions, going to FIFA to go and fight. So, if you don’t carry them along and you don’t carry the fraternity along, you end up with two factions, three factions. So, let’s all of us together now, come together and agree, and the reform can happen within 120 days. You don’t need one year for it. And it must start from local government, state government, regional government, to national government. NFF should only be doing international sports. That’s all NFF should be doing. When you want to deal with Nigeria, you deal with NFF, but when it comes to our local football, NFF has no business with it. NFF is not a legal entity in football. Let us understand that. It is a federalist institution as put together; it’s geopolitical, and it’s not football. Football is a merit-based sport. So, when anyone is telling you, it’s the turn of the north, it’s the turn of the south, it’s the turn of this, that’s not football. That’s geopolitics. You want to talk football; let them leave football to us. At the local government level, state government level, and let’s go and play our football. And because the government is funding football, no problem. They have to be there because it’s their money. So, we reform the entire thing. You separate international football from local football, separate geopolitics from merit. If you win the competition at the local government level, you go to the state level. If you win at the state level, you go to the regional. Win at regional, you should be at the national. This is the way it should be in every other sport, in every other endeavour in Nigeria. So, if you’re a coach who’s doing well at the local level, we’ll pick you. But how can you be a national coach when you have not coached anybody in your local government, in your state? How is it possible? You have not won any competition in your state. If you’ve not organised a competition in your state and you want to organise national football, how is it possible? So, if somebody is doing well at the local level and is doing well at the state level, then they can be invited to come to the national level. And this is the way it should be, and that’s my position.

As a club owner, what do you think can be done to the league to become an encompassing thing?

The National League cannot function the way it is now because if I gave you the opportunity to travel from Zamfara to Cross River State, you would not recover even if I give you one week. That’s just a fact. We don’t have the trains; we don’t have the airports and everything. The football has to be local. So, they have no business with our local football. If you want to play within Osun State, play within Osun State so that the travel time will be easy. The fans will find it easy. In Liverpool now, I can get on a train, and within two hours I’m in London. Show me where you can move between Kano and Lagos within two hours; it’s not possible. You can’t have 5,000 fans moving within that. So, let us stop lying to ourselves. The national competition should be a collegiate type of competition. When you have played your local football, you qualify for the next level, then you come to a camp and you play a competition just like the World Cup in four weeks. Everybody will come, stay in a hotel, and enjoy themselves; they host you, and that’s the national league that we should play. That’s the way it should be. If you want to do it twice a year, go ahead, but let’s stop lying to ourselves. And also, the cost is too high. If you want to play nationally and be going back and forth, instead of you to spend money to pay players’ salary, to pay coach’s salary, all your money will go for transportation and accommodation. We have done it in the Football Master Plan. It’s all there. You set up a committee; you say you will now set up another committee to review what that committee is doing; you are fooling yourself. So, we all know the answer; let us stop lying to ourselves.

The argument is that if we go that route, we will not produce a real national champion because in some zones, you will see the best teams in one zone, while the other zones have some lesser teams. How do we get around that to get the quality we desire?

Is football geopolitical? Does it matter where a person is from? Let us stop lying to ourselves; football is football. The quality is there. When you form your national team today, do you ask whether this person is from this state or that state? It is the best player you pick. If you want good players to come from another part of the country, go and invest in infrastructure in that place. I guarantee you, pick any area in Nigeria that you say is lagging behind, then I’ll put infrastructure there. You will see that within two years, you have the best players coming from there. And if you don’t get the best players from there, that infrastructure will attract players and attract coaches, and you will see that that place will do well.