Former Nigeria international and football administrator Segun Odegbami has warned that the recent changes in the leadership of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) will not by themselves resolve the deep-rooted problems affecting Nigerian football.
Odegbami spoke following the resignation of NFF President Ibrahim Gusau, General Secretary Mohammed Sanusi and members of the federation’s Executive Committee, describing the development as only a small part of a much bigger crisis facing the sport.
Speaking on Channels Television’s breakfast programme on Friday, the former Green Eagles captain said Nigerian football had accumulated administrative, legal and structural challenges over several decades.
“In the past almost 30 years or so, we have tied ourselves into a knot,” Odegbami said.
He argued that simply replacing the outgoing officials with a new set of administrators would likely produce the same results without addressing the underlying problems.
“We have removed, one way or the other, the people on the board and we might as well just say, ‘Look, let’s get a new set to go on,’ but we’ll get the same results,” he said.
Odegbami also noted that football remains a subject on which many stakeholders hold strong opinions, making it difficult to reach a common approach to solving the challenges confronting the sport.
“Football is a sport that everybody is an expert. Everybody has an answer, and everybody is right,” he said.
He called for a comprehensive review of the structures governing Nigerian football to provide greater clarity and establish a sustainable path forward.
“The answer lies in unknotting this complicated situation that we have, that is not making things clear, so that everybody can have a clear idea of what we need to do to move…
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