The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) frowns at various sub-standard football academies in Nigeria as it plans mass shutdown next year npflupdates.com reports.
The Nigeria Football Federation through its President, Alhaji Ibrahim Musa Gusau, said the federation is out to ensure standard footballing process across the country.
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NFF out to demolish sub-standard football academies in Nigeria
Speaking at the one-day FIFA Talent developmental programme in Abuja last week, Gusau affirmed the federation’s willingness to empower and support football academies.
“We are going to empower football academies and encourage them to run their academies professionally.”
According to Gusau, the NFF will provide the right guidelines to help academy owners administer football professionally.
“NFF will provide the right guidelines to administer academy football professionally,” he said.
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“Any football academy that does not Meet up with the required standard that the NFF will put in place will no longer operate in Nigeria.
“We will start the process from January 2024. We want the football academies to be administered under outmost sincerity and honesty.”
Speaking further, Gusau told the media that there will be a unit enshrined in Technical Department, that will be saddled with the responsibility of ensuring academies in Nigeria are standard.
“NFF will have a unit under the technical department that will be saddled with this responsibility of going to various states to access all the academies,” he stated.
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“They will go with the check lists to ascertain if what these academies submitted to the NFF is actually what is on ground. The unit officers will ensure that what the academies sent to the federation is the required standard,” he conclude saying.
I agree with President Gusau of the NFF on this important issue. Standards (bars) have to be raised because, as humans, we must keep improving.
But with improvement comes eagle-eyed support, constant supervision, and opportunity for growth.
If the NFF President is not sure about providing such tools consistently, he should PLEASE allow them to be.
Alhaji Gusau, we want to see good quality in the Nigerian local football league content, one higher than we had in the days of IICC (Shooting Stars,) El Kanemi of Borno, Plateau United, Rangers of Enugu, Julius Berger, Stationery Stores, Sharks of Port Harcourt, Bendel Insurance, Flash Flamingoes etc.
In your time, the bar should be raised higher than obtained in those days when those clubs ruled the waves and provided jobs for Nigerians, Ghanaians, Cameroonians etc.
We want the standards of stadium facilities to also rise, and please, sit down with club proprietors towards fashioning out plans that could help them sustain the standards of what they are doing. There are a dozen or more ways in which club owners could sustain their clubs. I could state them here but I trust that they are knowledgeable about these sources.
Please wake them up to their responsibilities or scrap those who fail to make use of the many sources of income generation available to them. They and their footballers should not be squabbling over contract issues.
The NFF also has its own external sources of generating income apart from those of the government. Give the LMC more leverage in their duty of managing our football league. We want to see our local league clubs featured more often on our TV screens. Your job is well cut out for you, but I trust you can do your best by at least putting in place some of those enabling climates before the expiration of your tenure of office. I know you can make it if you try.