Understanding Nigeria's Football Model - The Strength and The Weakness

A Documentary By Benson Chukwueke, A Sport Marketing Consultant in Nigeria

The structure and the way football is operated in Nigeria and the resultant effects is what I refer to as MODEL 

Well, It doesn't quite mean there was a delibrate engineering by some sports technocrats to achieve any form of growth and development in the sport at any given time; just the way Belgium and China re-modelled their football few years ago for commercial growth. The structure and the way football operates in Nigeria today evolved over time, more out of happenstances.

The glory days of Nigerian league: the great rivalry of Enugu Rangers Vs IICC Shooting Stars of Ibadan, with full accompliment of all Nigerian stars you can think of: Segun Odegbami, Christian Chukwu, Muda Lawal, Emmanuel Okala...; the large crowd and fellowership of Stationery Stores of Lagos arrived in your town for away matches; The match of the week on NTA network wednesday night drew over 50 million viewers who watched the league highlights and the selected match for that week....all these just faded away with time.

What happened: The arrival of Satellite or Cable TV as it is called, started exposing Nigeria fans to more exciting and sophisticated leagues in Europe: Italian Seria A, English Premier league, German Bundesliga, Spanish Laliga...

The aluring quest to make money and to play in some of the top flight leagues abroad for global fame led to mass exdous of star players out of Nigerian leagues, which weakened the entertainment quality of the league. So fans gradually drifted away and soon got addicted to the more fascinating European leagues.

With the large deposit of natural football talents came the establishment of Pepsi football academy, kwara state football academy and today FC Bescola (FCBarcelona Academy), Irruka Football Academy affiliated to Paris Saint Germain (PSG) France... These academies nurturing young talents not to feed Nigerian league clubs, but more to export these young lads to clubs Abroad.

The Nigerian Football Model: is positioned to feed Europe and other countries around the world with talents, but greatly weaken it's own local football and the potentials of it's commercial enterprise.

The Strength:

1. Build A Global Brand for the National Teams 
With Nigerian stars exposed to more sophisticated training regime in Europe, improved their game and brought these back to the national team. The model has greatly built Nigeria national teams.

Nigeria national team couldn't win any major continental trophy till 1980, when they won the African nations cup. But with most of their stars playing in Europe, they were able to muster enough quality to to win AFCON three times and qualify for Fifa world cup in 1994. Since then, Nigeria has always been at the World cup finals for eight time running now.

The Nigerian Olympic men's football team won Gold medal in 1996, Silver in 2008 and Bronze in 2016. And Nigeria U21 team became runners up in 2005 world Youth Championship.

With churning out of young talent from these academies, Nigeria has dominated the cadet level, and has won Fifa U17 World Cup for five times running.

2. Empowering Youths and Aliviating Poverty for Families: The exdous of players to more lucrative clubs abroad have empowered appreciable number of youths that has football talent. Most of them are stories of grass to grace.

Football largely played by kids of low income earners, has become a source of aliviating poverty. Just a players signing for top club in Europe can earn millions of euros enough to aliviate poverty not only for his family but his entire village or town.

Stories of players like Jay Jay Okocha, Nwankwo Kanu, Obafemi Martins, Wilfred Ndidi...has greatly inspired youngsters not only in Nigeria but in the entire Africa. Hope for young talented players and their families.

Today, a lot of scouts and Agents flood Nigeria seeking for talents to export to clubs abroad without any form of regulations redirecting them on the better way it should be done.

The Weakness

1. Government Inadequate Funding:
Football is largely funded by government  as a youth developmental thing and doesn't operate as a business or commercial enterprise.

17 out of the 20 clubs in NPFL today are owned and funded by the state government, apart from ABS, MFM, Remo Stars owned by individuals and church ministry.  When a football loving politician like Orji Uzor Kalu come into power, the state club begin to enjoy better funding and start getting good results in  the league, vice versa.

Generally, clubs are not properly funded, players and coaching staff are owed salary and bonuses running into many months and contracts are not kept. So players are not motivated to give their best.

Consequently, the league is largely undermined as if it was modeled to be feeder leagues to teams mostly in north Africa, Europe and China... Players abscond to teams abroad and local clubs loose their quality intermittently.

Young enterprising players refuse to sign for clubs in the local league, but prefer to even travel to remote countries  like Vietiam, Malta, Bangladesh, Fiji Island to play their football. Therefore, most NPFL teams could not assemble enough quality at anytime, to compete at the continental level.

2. Consumers Habits and Buying behaviour
The average Nigerian fan require more quality football than what NPFL have to offer as entertainment at the moment. Satellite tv stations like SuperSports are offering world class european leagues and the consumers are almost addicted to Premier League, UEFA Champions league.... something far more better than what any Nigerian professional leagues could offer.

More football consumers in Nigeria are buying merchandise like pay tv subscriptions, sportswears and souvenirs of these european clubs and a lot of capital flight out of the Nigerian economy. Where as the stadiums are almost empty during Nigerian league games. Hardly will you find fans puting on  Nigerian clubs' jersey.