Poor handling of sponsorship deals and lack of credibility in the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) are major reasons behind the inability of the Nigerian Nationwide League (NNWL) to secure title sponsors for the league, official has said.
The NNWL official, who pleaded for anonymity said securing title sponsors for the lowest ranked league in the country is the biggest challenge confronting the Ahmad Kawu led board of NNWL. He noted that potential sponsors are well knowledgeable about the sponsorship policy of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) which has prevented other people and corporate bodies aside official business partners of the NFF from investing in Nigerian football leagues.
He said about three corporate organisations are lining up to bankroll the Nationwide League but they are however scare of putting money in venture that will not guarantee them return benefits.? “Getting sponsorship is our biggest challenge. We have about three organisations that have showed interest to sponsor the league, but because of some issues in NFF they are scared of investing their money in the league. MTN, for instance cannot sponsor Nigeria football league simply because Globacom which is their business rival, is an official partner of the NFF. Likewise any other company that do the same business with any NFF’s official partners cannot invest in Nigerian football just because NFF is bent on protecting the business interest of their partners. This is not good for our football. Ghana for instance, Globacom is sponsoring their football league, yet you still see MTN logo boldly displayed on their clubs jersies. We must put a stop to this slave sponsorship arrangement if we really want people to come and invest and help develop our football,” he said.
NNWL official also lambasted NFF’s marketing department and committee for their poor handling of the Super Eagles’ marketing brand. He said the NFF’s marketing department failed to capitalised on Super Eagles’ success in South Africa 2013 AFCON to leverage on the marketing opportunities that would not have only put NFF on sound financial footing, but attract sponsors to all the various football leagues in the country. “As African champion there are many opportunities for us to harvest from if we have vibrant marketing department and committee in NFF or if the NFF themselves are sincere and committed to develop football. The only thing you see them do was to collect money from the state governors in the name of identify with the Super Eagles for winning Nations Cup. If the NFF are interested in the development football why not tells these governors to invest the money in the league or use it to develop football in their respective state.”??