Nigeria CAF Elite A referee Ferdinand Udoh has stated that the country match officials would soon get recognition from Africa Football governing body CAF to officiate at the Africa Cup of Nations, Sports247 reports.
Udoh who missed out of the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations due to injury says the country’s referees would be given recognition by CAF in subsequent years.
“It takes a period of time for referees to grow, just like educational system in Nigeria,” the 32-year-old said.
“It will take you a period of time to leave primary school, secondary school and then, you get to the university. And from the university, you can begin to apply for jobs.”
“So, we still have referees who are going through primary and secondary schools. I was lucky to have grown so fast, because at the time they needed referees from Nigeria, I was picked, and I was just moving quite fast.”
Udoh, who was rated as Nigeria’s best referee from 2014 to 2017, reveals that the country has a lot of young officials who would soon be recognized by CAF, stating that their omission from this year’s AFCON has nothing to do with quality.
“Now we have younger referees who are at the secondary level, and in a couple of years, they will leave the secondary level to the tertiary level before they can be considered for the Nations Cup (AFCON).
“We have wonderful, young referees. It is not due to lack of quality (that they were not selected). They have to be groomed over a period of time,” the highly-rated FIFA-badged referee said.
One of such referees is 27-year-old Adebimpe Quadri, the youngest ever Nigerian FIFA-badged official, who coincidentally, took the record from Udoh.
For the 2019 AFCON in Egypt, no Nigerian referees was selected by CAF -with the exception of Abel Baba, who was chosen in the assistant refereeing role.
