Many years now, Nigeria has seen the highs and lows of football and sports in general. Though the country has done well in age grade competitions compared to the senior levels but the transition of the same result to the senior level has become an uphill task. Club football has ones hit the peak for just a short term, many thanks to Enyimba FC with thier continental triumph but now the system has become a shadow of itself. Ones upon a time when the stadiums were full to capacity during league and FA cup matches but those are history now. Nigeria has also seen various sports administrators, coming with plans and going, sometimes going with the government of the day, thereby going with thier plans, that’s if they have one.
This is the most pressing of all points the Nigeria’s Sports Minister, Sunday Dare is set to tackle on his ten year road map for football development in the country. In one of his interviews on the master plan to take football to a greater level in the next ten years, sports minister, Sunday Dare has expressed the need to give character, culture and plan to our football to bring back the old character as a lot of things have disappeared from our football over the years. In retrospect of his appointment as sports minister, Dare recollected how shambolic the football system had become as he took over affairs as Sports Minister three years ago. “I realize that our football is beyond playing a game and loosing, or qualifying for the next round.
“The absence of our home based players is as a result that our grassroots football suffers, our youth football suffers. I witnessed some time ago when it was hell getting into the stadium to watch a local team. I also saw that we watched football on television. That’s no longer possible. I saw quite a lot of things have disappeared from our football. I also talked to football experts and I saw that the value chain of our football has totally collapsed. The culture of our football was disappearing .
Dare emphasized on the need to feed Nigeria’s football to grow by putting in place grassroots development as that will give the much desired end result needed. “We turned our football only in the direction of the end result. So production, what comes out at the end is the raw materials that you feed in. We were not feeding the right material from the grassroots and the talent haunt so you can’t get the right output.” He concluded.
