Former Chairman of Heartland of Owerri, Fan Ndubuoke is a thoroughbred football professional. Having cut his teeth as a sports reporter, he rose to the position of sports editor before becoming publisher of the now rested Sports Link. Ndubuoke, a former National President of the Sports Writers Association of Nigeria in this interview with JOHN EGBOKHAN faults claims by Aminu Maigari that he was the most successful NFF President and questions Amaju Pinnick’s plan to make Maigari life President of the NFF. Excerpts:
Question: During the last Elective Congress of the NFF, Aminu Maigari flaunted his scorecard as being the most successful board. But in reality, it appears that is not the case.
Answer: Exactly, that is most untrue. It is a lie, which the media, especially broadcast journalists have bought and are daily saying during their news presentation. The most successful NFF board of all time remains the one led by the late Emeka Omeruah. It was the first duly elected NFF board. It was during his time that our Golden Eaglets, comprising former Super Eagles captain, Nwankwo Kanu and Wilson Oruma won the FIFA U-17 World Cup in Japan in 1993. In the same 1993, the Omeruah’s board also successfully qualified the Super Eagles for the first time to the FIFA World Cup, USA ’94. I was a member of the committee that got the ticket to the World Cup during the match against Algeria in Algiers. It was the first time that our senior national team was qualifying for the World Cup and we went to USA ’94, won two quality matches against Bulgaria and Greece before losing in dramatic circumstances to Italy in the second round. At the end of the tournament, we rose to the fifth position in the FIFA ranking, which remains our best position till date on the global ranking index of football nations. In 1994, it was also during the time of the Omeruah’s board that the Super Eagles won the Africa Cup of Nations for the first time outside Nigeria in Tunis. In 1996, Nigeria also won its first soccer gold at the Olympics Games in Atalanta. It was described as the mother of all gold medals and it was the first time also during the tenure of Omeruah. Under Omeruah, our referees also officiated at the continental and international levels. So I am baffled when I heard that Maigari’s board was the most successful NFF board. Placed side by side with Omeruah, it is clear that Maigari did not achieve up to half of what Omeruah achieved What was the winning strategy used by the board of Omeruah? We had a well-laid down structure that ensured that all hands were on deck to take our football to Olympian heights. Under Omeruah, wehad a system where the national team coaches were answerable to the technical committee, who were also answerable to the board of the NFF. Our roles were well-defined, not the type of shoddy arrangement that we had in the last board headed by Maigari, where the coaches were always at loggerheads with the technical committee. During our time, all coaches must defend their team list before the technical committee. That’s why I told Amaju Pinnick, when we spoke earlier that his first task is to rebuild our national teams and ensure that our national coaches stop being emperors in terms of selection of players because their reason for such selection is simply economical. Pinnick must make sure that coaches are answerable to only the board and not to any other interested body. Pinnick appears to be a good choice to be the head of the NFF because of his passion and drive for sponsorship and innovation but having looked at the other members of the board, I have my doubts on what they can achieve because two trees cannot make a forest. Apart from one or tow persons, the other board members have no reason to be there.
Question: Do you think Pinnick is on the right track?
Answer: He means well for Nigerian football but I think that there was no reason for him to think of making Maigari a life President of the NFF. I s he trying to pay him back for helping him become head of the NFF? This country has never been so embarrassed the way we were under Maigari. In any case, it is the board and not Pinnick that will decide whether to make Maigari life President, which he does not deserve because he didn’t achieve more than Omeruah, who was not made life President. If Pinnick wants to achieve, he should not think of second term but concentrate on working because that was what derailed us during the tenure of Maigari, whose board, was busy plotting how to secure second term when we were at Brazil 2014 World Cup. Pinnick should think of the way to make NFF self-sufficient and correct all the illegalities surrounding the body. If he forgets about second term, he will succeed and write his name in gold. I wish him well and have confidence that he can do it.