Former Technical Committee member of the Nigeria Football Federation, and proprietor of the Early Start Weekend Football Academy, Barr. Dudu Orumen has lambasted NFF president Aminu Maigari for travelling during the last Federation Cup final held in Lagos. He described it as an irresponsible act on the part of the NFF boss.
He said that for Nigerian football to return to the glory days, there needs to be a systemic change and that the government needs to spearhead the needed change. “It has happened before, in Australia they seemed to be having the same problems that we are encountering in Nigeria and the government called all the sports associations and asked them to resign otherwise they will not receive any funding. If the government stops funding the NFF, trust me the’ Glass House’ will be empty because they do not have the creative capacity to raise funds.
Speaking exclusively to LEADERSHIP SPORTS, Orumen further stated that: “It is difficult to remove football from the reality that is Nigeria as a country. Nigerian football does not operate in a vacuum. That is why all the social ills that exist within our society are reflected in our football. We have an issue of competence. We have a football federation president who does not know how many clubs are in the Premier League. You have a football president who does not know the importance of the FA Cup which they have now corrupted to be the Federation Cup. On the day of the Federation Cup final between Heartland and Enyimba, with three governors present, the president of the NFF was at a sub- committee meeting of CAF in Egypt and he was in Lagos the day before. Now it means that there is a knowledge gap by the people who are running the business and they are there because that is what the society does now, we just throw mediocres into very sensitive and very serious positions and they cannot deal with our problems. So, it is not a structural problem, it is a systemic problem that throws forth people who know next to nothing to run the activities of our football.
On the stewardship of Aminu Maigari’s predecessor in office, he had this to say: “his predecessor in office Sanni Lulu, was director of sports in Abuja FCT, there was not a single professional football club in the city, then he became the president of the FA. It is like bringing the Managing Director of a Community Bank in a remote part of the country to be CBN governor, there is going to be hoopla and that is what we are seeing. The honest truth is, like I said the problem is not peculiar to football but it could have been mitigated if we could just put a few things in place. The issue of personnel, the board membership, these are people who do not have any connection with the game. They have no passion, they have no appetite. As a little boy I looked forward to watching the FA Cup all the time. Then you have the president of the FA, not knowing the weight of responsibility he has, going for a CAF sub- committee meeting, when his number one football property is on. All the other things that are noticeable are a throwback to a system that is deficient in every respect.” He said.
