By Victor Eyinnaya and Adeyinka Akintunde, Lagos on March 12, 2016

Former member of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) Technical Committee, Godwin Dudu-Orumen, has expressed dissatisfaction with the way Nigerian football is being handled. He said the administration should run the Federation based on best accepted standards and not the kind that chokes and excludes stakeholders that have the passion and deep interest of the game at heart.

Dudu-Orumen in a no-holds-bared conversation with Daily Sports lamented that Nigerian football has been run on the premises of pretence, thereby denying the money-spinning sport its real status and value in the country housing the biggest concentration of black people in the world.

The renowned sports commentator traced NFF’s problems from the time of the Sani Lulu Abdullahi-led administration when it unilaterally excluded some stakeholders from participating in the body’s election just to suit the past board’s whims and caprices. He made it clear that the solution to NFF’s problems is to revisit and amend bad rules created during the Lulu era.

Dudu-Orumen noted that the marketability of the Super Eagles and other Nigerian football teams should be the concern of the NFF, including fashioning out ways to ensure that the teams get to play grade ‘A’ matches.

In his view, it is not compulsory that an ex-footballer should be at the helm of affairs of Nigerian football or the Super Eagles but anybody eligible for the job should get it. To him, “If an ex-footballer has the necessary skill to run the game, if he is ready to add to the value chain, then let him come. This thing is all about being educated, very knowledgeable, creativity and having the necessary skills. Football business is a value chain; the fan, the referee, the footballer and the administrator. No one is more important than the other.”

On the double-header AFCON qualifier against Egypt, Dudu-Orumen said he believes in “a stitch in time saves nine,” adding: “Those who created the problem right in our hands must be held responsible and they should be compelled to solve it.” He advised that the Eagles should play with minimum pressure against their opponents.

Speaking on the likelihood of Nigeria going for a foreign coach, Dudu-Orumen said: “Everybody has always known my position that where we are at today, a foreign coach is the answer. It will give the Eagles a more marketable value.”

The Director of Cowbell Football Academy also spoke about the other national teams like the Super Falcons, Beach Eagles, Flying Eagles, etc. He said that the problem with these teams is that there is no “honesty of purpose”. For the women teams, the problem, in his view, is that there is no strong league to power the teams in all categories, while the Sand Eagles do not have a solid foundation. “So, there is the need for real restructuring that will lead to honesty of purpose that would throw up steady progress,” Dudu-Orumen said.

•Photo shows Dudu-Orumen.

Source Daily Sports

Posted March 12, 2016

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