Exactly four years ago, I came back home and met with football stakeholders, including State FA Chairmen, to discuss what I believed should be a new vision for Nigerian football.
I also invited leading sports editors, writers and journalists to a separate interactive session where I presented my thoughts, listened to their perspectives and discussed frankly with them the state of Nigerian football, the challenges confronting us and what I believed needed to be done differently.
One point I made very clearly then was this:
Unless we are prepared to confront, overhaul and rebuild the foundational structure of Nigerian football, it will matter very little who becomes NFF President.
Four years later, I remain convinced of this.
This does not mean leadership does not matter. It does. Competence matters. Integrity matters. Vision matters. Professionalism and accountability matter.
But our problem is bigger than one President, one Executive Committee or even the NFF itself.
I have seen highly competent people become members of the NFF Executive Committee, only to find themselves constrained by the structure they entered. We cannot continue changing personalities while leaving essentially the same system in place and expect fundamentally different outcomes.
Anyone who has seriously administered or invested in Nigerian football knows that doing football business in Nigeria is difficult.
The challenges run through our clubs, leagues, national teams, administration, infrastructure, grassroots development and commercial structures. And football itself operates within the wider Nigerian sporting ecosystem.
So perhaps we need to ask ourselves some uncomfortable questions.
Where exactly do we expect our next generation of sporting talents to come from?
How many functional playing fields do we have across our local governments?
How many primary and secondary schools still have usable sports facilities?
What is the condition of sports facilities in our universities, polytechnics and colleges of education?
Where are the running tracks?
Where are the standard swimming pools, particularly in our riverine communities where we should naturally be producing swimmers?
Most importantly, what deliberate pathway exists to identify a talented Nigerian child, nurture that talent and develop him or her towards elite and podium performance?
If we cannot convincingly answer these questions, then changing the leadership of one federation every time we fail cannot be the solution.
Nigeria has become too accustomed to quick fixes.
We lose we demand somebody’s removal.
The national team struggles we demand a new coach.
The federation disappoints we demand another President or Executive Committee.
But how often do we ask whether the system itself is capable of consistently producing the outcomes we expect?
And this responsibility goes far beyond the NFF.
What are our local governments doing about grassroots sports?
What are our states investing in?
What role are our schools playing?
What are our National and State Assemblies doing legislatively to make sports an important component of national development?
What incentives exist for genuine private investment in sports?
Even where government funding for sports increases, we must still ask whether that investment is translating into stronger institutions, better infrastructure, athlete welfare, development pathways and sustainable performance.
The Sports Media Must Also Look Inwards
And there is another constituency that cannot be exonerated from the present crisis in Nigerian sports: the sports media.
Our sports editors, writers, reporters and journalists occupy an enormously important position in the sporting ecosystem. They inform the public, interrogate decisions, preserve institutional memory, expose wrongdoing, celebrate achievement and, importantly, help shape the national conversation about sports.
That influence comes with responsibility.
Unfortunately, parts of our sports media have themselves become divided along the same lines that have weakened the wider sporting ecosystem.
We increasingly see journalists identified not simply by the quality of their reporting or analysis, but by the administrator, federation, group or interest they are perceived to support or oppose.
Some have unfortunately become praise singers for particular administrators, while others have positioned themselves primarily as attack voices against those administrators and their supporters.
When journalism becomes about defending or attacking personalities rather than interrogating policies, structures and outcomes, the sport itself loses.
The sports journalist should neither be the praise singer of the administrator nor his permanent adversary.
The primary loyalty of sports journalism should be to the truth, accountability and the development of the sporting ecosystem itself.
The media must ask difficult questions regardless of who occupies office. It must scrutinise today’s administrator with the same standards it applied to yesterday’s administrator and should apply those same standards to tomorrow’s administrator.
If we genuinely want reform, therefore, everyone must be prepared to look inwards.
Administrators.
Federations.
Clubs.
Government.
Legislators.
Investors.
Coaches.
Athletes.
And yes, the sports media too.
We must also confront the increasing politicisation of our sporting ecosystem.
Too many sporting decisions today are subjected to political, ethnic, regional or even religious interpretations. When these considerations become more important than competence, professionalism and performance, the system inevitably suffers.
Therefore, while we clamour for a better NFF, perhaps the greater clamour should be for a better Nigerian sporting ecosystem.
Nigeria will continue to produce flashes of sporting brilliance because our talent pool is extraordinary.
But flashes of success must never be mistaken for evidence of a successful system.
We should use our tongues to count our teeth.
Where do our talents come from?
Who identifies them?
Who develops them?
Where are the facilities?
Where is the pathway?
Where is the investment?
Where is the accountability?
And where is the structure connecting grassroots and school sports to state programmes, national federations, professional clubs and ultimately elite performance?
Our problem in Nigerian sports is not about leadership alone. It is systemic and structural. You cannot fix one and leave the other.
Leadership must certainly be accountable. Poor performance cannot be excused simply by blaming the system.
But equally, good people operating continuously within dysfunctional structures will eventually be constrained by those structures.
Nigeria has the talent. We have the population. We have passionate supporters. We have experienced administrators, coaches, former athletes, sports scientists, investors and professionals at home and abroad.
What we have failed to sufficiently build is the system that connects all these assets together.
Until we do, we will continue celebrating occasional victories, lamenting failures, changing personalities and repeating the same cycle.
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When Nigeria is genuinely ready to confront the foundations of the problem rather than merely treating its symptoms, I am convinced there will be many competent hands willing to contribute to rebuilding our sports.
Until then, those genuinely trying to make a difference within the existing structure can only achieve what that structure permits and sometimes, considering the limitations under which they operate, they may well be performing miracles.
The Nigerian football quagmire will not be solved by one election, one NFF President, one Executive Committee or one administration.
It will begin to be solved when we are finally prepared to rebuild the system itself.
These are my personal reflections on the development of Nigerian football and sports.
Christian Emeruwa, MBA,PhD.
Concerned Sport Professional.
