Since year 1990, the formerly known Nigeria Premier League (NPL) now called Nigeria Professional Football League(NPFL) has been active with so many administrative lapses from the principal body 'League Management Company' (LMC) to the sub-ordinaries which are the clubs.
There are so many ways money are generated in the round leather game as modern wealth mine which a footballing powerhouse like the West Africans has yet to fully tap into it.
Nigeria as a nation of about 200 million inhabitats of 36 states including the Federal Capital Territory(FCT) with over 90 percent of the elite clubs sponsored by States Government.
Below are some of the reasons why Nigeria domestic football is not attractive within and beyond the shone.
Broadcasting(Television): Poor turnout of fans and lack of publicity can be traced to the malfunctioning of the administrative body of the league and more importantly, the lack of alternate ideas by notably the hosting teams on how to put games on the global map through partnership with television stations or common internet live streaming as it will encourage followership and improve the market value of the players.
Commercial Sponsorship: The corrupt practices doesn't encourage co-operate partnership of any form in order to improve publicity.
No business organisation or individual will like to put water inside a basket.
New-era administrators must put integrity ahead of personal interest for brands commercialization and ethical endorsement.
Government Influence: Most clubs are government owned and thereby are 90 to 100 percent dependant on the political office holders for progress and survival even when players and the entire team plus backroom/non-playing staff are often owned for months.
The administrators are most times the products of political recommendations from the public office holders which leaves them with little or nothing to offer for their official sporting roles and are always short of income generating strategies.
THE BUSINESS VENTURE
Football is richer than it natural nourishment and only the wise will tap from the stinky global wealth.
Most club administrators in Nigeria are accountable to almost nobody for income and expenditure as their principals or proprietors are always busy going about their first duty call which is governance and they care little or doesn't care at all about what may be lying beneath the green grass.
Many administrators are owners of legal or illegal football academies which contain subjects used as decoy for money making.
The Nigeria Professional Football League have no restrictions such as Players Loan rule,Home grown rule and that offered inlets and outlets for unceremonial mass recruitments and dismissal every season.
Almost all the teams in the top tier of Nigerian soccer cultivates the habit of recruiting an average of 25 players and dump an average of 30 annually.
Even the veterans doesn't belong to the teams but are serving on borrowed time with no solid contract preventing them from jumping the ship to Europe or any other foreign league at anytime or period of the season.
The total transfer fees or larger percentage of the fortunate loanees will go to the purse of the non-existing 'adult' football academies which indirectly belongs to the heads of the professional clubs.
By Olamide Sunday Oyetunji
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