By Harry Awurumibe, Editor, Abuja Bureau
The reasons Nigerian women’s football league champions, Rivers Angels Football Club of Port Harcourt were knocked out in the group stage of the maiden Confederation of Africa Football Women’s Champions League (CAFWCL) in Cairo, Egypt will not be fully discussed in one fell swoop.
As highlighted in the first part of this report, there are other problems that bedevilled the club outside the administrative incompetence which led to the inability of Rivers Angels FC to obtain entry visas on time to hit Egypt days ahead of the kick off date of the competition as the seven other clubs including fellow West African club, Hasaacas Ladies of Ghana did.
Perhaps, it will be proper to also examine the technical side of Rivers Angels FC to understand if the Technical Department set up the team properly
before embarking on the continental championship where only the best eight clubs out of several thousands in Africa featured.
For the die-hard women’s football enthusiasts, the signs that Rivers Angels will not perform well in the CAFWCL in Egypt showed at the West African Football Union (WAFU-B) play-off in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire in July/August.
In the final of the play-off, Ghana’s Hasaacas Ladies
thrashed Rivers Angels 3-1 on August 5, 2021, although the Nigerian champions still qualified because Nigeria is the defending champions of African Women’s Cup of Nations (AWCON).
Apparently aware that his team will not give him what he wants in Egypt, Head Coach Edwin Okon pressed the panick button and went on shopping spree to bring in new faces who could not blend with his main players, and by the time Rivers Angels arrived Cairo for the continental championship, the team has looked disjointed.
For example, FC Robo of Lagos captain Gift Monday and Angels’ first-choice goalkeeper in Egypt, Charlotte Adjei, a Ghanaian, are among half a dozen new recruits while familiar faces like youth international striker, Cynthia Onyedika Aku who scored a goal in the play-off was not considered good enough for the CAFWCL final in Egypt.
Another monster that contributed to Rivers Angels’ woeful outings in Egypt and playing second fiddle to Ghana’s Hasaacas Ladies in Abidjan earlier in the year is the Nigerian women’s football league.
The much-hyped Nigeria Women’s Football League (NWFL) only exists in the media space as anyone who does not agree that all is well with women’s football league in this part of the world is labelled an “Obote Man”, who deserves to be eliminated, apologies to ex-President of Uganda, late Field Marshall Idi-Amin Dada.
The country’s women’s football league for some years now have been bedevilled by poor organisation, with boycott of matches and withdrawals by clubs midway into the season and abandonment of matches the order of the day.
Prompt News investigations further revealed that since the soft-drink giant, Pepsi / 7Up Bottling Plc (Nigeria) ended its multi-million naira sponsorship of the Nigeria’s Super Falcons, Women’s Football League and Federation Cup from 1997 to 2002, during the regimes of Colonel Abdulmumini Aminu and Brig. General Dominic Oneya as NFA Chairmen, no other sponsor has signed up to sponsor Nigerian women’s football league.
Without fear of contradictions those years of Pepsi sponsorship of the Super Falcons, Women’s Football League and Federation Cup
courtesy of British-born, Mr. Iaian Nelson, could be described as the ‘Golden Years’ of women’s football in Nigeria as funds were released in time for
both the national team and clubsides to execute their programmes.
Also, players of the national team and clubsides participating in the league or national camp heavily felt the huge impacts of Pepsi sponsorship deal with the Nigeria Football Association (NFA) even as Pepsi’s sponsorship packages extended to the furnishing of the NFA Women’s Football Department headed by late Mrs. Elizabeth (Lizzy) Onyenwenwa and payment of the seating allowances of NFA Women’s Football Development Committee under the Chairmanship of Chief (Mrs) Gina Yeseibo.
The involvement of Pepsi in women’s football paved the way for the 1998 /99 set of Super Falcons to camp for over two months in Kaduna ahead of the first-ever African Women Championship (AWC) which Nigeria won without conceeding any defeat or goals and later finished 7th in the FIFA Women’s World Cup final in United States of America (USA) in 1999.
Despite re-branding the women’s football league by the current administrators,
nothing has changed in the country’s women’s football league as it still lacks funding with sponsors refusing to identify with it for some reasons which will be a topic for another day.
Sadly, while the Nigerian women’s football league is feeding from hand to mouth, the major sponsor of the South African women’s football team and women’s football league, Sasol has last month renewed its long-standing partnership with SAFA to sponsor Banyana Banyana and the country’s women’s football league containing 144 teams until 2025.
The integrated energy and chemical company first partnered with South Africa’s leading football body in 2009 and the relationship has grown given the rise of women’s football in the country.
In Ghana, Electroland Ghana Ltd, distributors of NASCO electronic appliances had recently announced new packages for the Ghana Women’s League and Women’s League Player.
This is even as at the inauguration of the current NWFL Board then Sports Minister, Barrister
Solomon Dalung threw a challenge to the members to rebrand ‘their products’ so that the league can have sponsors, partners and investors.
It is on record that NWFL and others like the Nigeria National League (NNL) and the Nigeria Nationwide League One came on board at the same time but NNL and Nationwide League One are marching on, securing millions of naira sponsorship deals from corporate organisations while not much has been heard from the women’s football league, at least not to knowledge of women’s football stakeholders hence the lull in the women’s football league.
In fact, before Covid-19 pandemic devasted the world, the leadership of the Nigeria Nationwide League One unveiled PIPUL TV as its title sponsor in a N100 million deal in Lagos while it was the turn of the NNL a day after to unveil Sports betting company, BET9A, as its Official Title Sponsor.
Watch out for the concluding part of this revealing report. It’s a bombshell.
