It is no longer hidden that football has been a powerful force that has been bringing Nigerians from all walks of life for decades.
Football is uniting tools in the country that have been inflicted with suffering including lack of basic human infrastructures, insecurities, unemployment, weakened educational system, and lots others.
Most Nigerians have resorted to football as the single means of survival, the evidence can be seen whenever the National teams are playing. It is a uniting time when people from various backgrounds, irrespective of their tribes or religious identity, the rich and poor, illiterates and literacy come together under one roof (viewing center) in their various localities to show their support for the national teams.
People tend to forget the problems in the country within that period and create to interact with one another, have fun and laugh or sober together when Nigeria wins or loses in a football match.
Buttressing on point of the importance of football in Nigeria and to Nigerians, Chairman, League Management Company(LMC-NPFL) and Vice President of the Nigeria Football Federation(NFF), Shehu Dikko in an interview with the New York Times earlier in the month, noted that the word ‘Football’ is more than what mere mouth can express.
“Football in Nigeria is life – it’s more than anybody can explain with words,” Dikko said.
“You have to feel it. Nigeria has over 500 tribes, and so many traditions, but football is the only activity that breaks through all of our fault lines.
Once there is football, everybody is Nigerian. Nobody cares who you are, what you do, or what language you speak.
So football is more than just a game for us. It’s what binds this country together,” he said.
Sports(in particular football) have been what is putting the country on the global map with Nigeria’s historic 10-0 victory over São Tomé and Principe in the 2023 AFCON Qualifiers Group A match in Morocco on Monday, 13th June 2022.
