Until the recent explanation by the Head of Refereeing at the Confederation of African Football (CAF), Desire Noumandiez Doue, as to why Nigerian football referees last served as centre referee in AFCON matches in 2006, some 18 long years ago, I cannot recall any one in our dear country telling us why our countrymen could not offer such a service in honour of their names, in honour of their country and in honour of the beautiful game loved most on the whole of planet earth. And this is a soccer mad country. What is more, this game is the greatest instrument of unity in our country.
According to the CAF referees’ boss, Nigerians have been ineligible for selection for centre referee position because ‘’they are not deemed the best’’. He went on to say that Nigeria has competent referees but that our men and women of whistle ‘’need to enhance their performance to meet CAF standards’’. He said further that ‘’the selection process for referees spans over a year and a half, involving continuous scouting, evaluation and selection. We don’t need good referees. We need the best’’, the Ivorian concluded.
Now we have heard the cause of our mysterious, inglorious, monumental national snub in the past 18 years. But my question is: What is the special thing that anyone needs to do to make our ‘’good referees to become the best’’ that successive Nigerian Football Association chairmen and successive Sports ministers since 2006 have not deemed it fit or sufficient enough to warrant their attention and commitment to rectifying the matter?
Clearly, we not only need to urgently commence the development of all cadre of personnel to man the various professional arms of our sports, both internally and externally, government has a duty to be concerned also about the progress of our representatives in their respective engagements. It is simply not enough to ensure, say, the availability of referees or judges in all the sports, we must ensure that they also rise along in their careers and become our able representatives/ diplomats continentally and world -wide.
Is it not, for example, a crying shame that the last time anyone heard about the Chairman of Nigerian Referees Association (NRA) was the era when Linus Mba headed the body? Ever since then, I cannot remember any other name that became famous as a referee in Nigeria. When are we ever going to have our own Pierluigi Collina, the Italian referee who became world famous as he was designated as referee of integrity by the International Federation of Football History? Collina made calls that no one disputed at all more so in the era before the arrival of VAR. Football, and refereeing in particular, has done that man great good; it has made him rich and famous because of his competent service in that arm of football.
We talk endlessly about the importance of soft power. Occupying refereeing and other critical positions in sports is an example of a nation possessing soft power.
Whatsoever it is worth, Doue’s explanation is worth a trillion to some of us. In the absence of such an intelligence, many of us concluded that it is corruption, the well- known cancer that has eaten the heart of our country out, that must be responsible for the exclusion of Nigerian referees at the centre in CAF competitions.
Why will anyone who is conversant with our football not think such a negative thought? I can recall today that some 20 years ago, I had written a piece on a Nigerian referee who had given 16 minutes of added time to two teams whic were playing a match in our national league competition. Yet, in the course of the match, there were no suspension of play due to a grave injury to any of the players leading to stoppage for a long time, nor was there any other ugly incident such as the invasion of the pitch by angry supporters of any of the teams that could have warranted such a long duration of added time at a time when the maximum minutes were more or less 5 minutes.
The referee, based solely on his wisdom and not any known football rules, decided to give the players such an overgenerous addition. The rumour then was that the referee wanted to favour the host of that encounter who needed such a fairly long time to be able to equalize a goal it had conceded and to be able to score a winning goal before it stood a chance of escaping relegation!
The amazing thing about this refereeing matter is that we have had many chairmen of the national football refereeing association after Linus Mba, why has none of them done something to correct the mistake or rectify whatever is responsible for Nigerians not being selected to serve as centre referee ins AFCON matches.
Given Nigeria’s blessedness with numbers, talents and love for football, some of us patriots expect our country to produce more than three quarter of the aggregate of the candidates produced by the rest of the continent for selection any time we have AFCON competitions.
We are aware that in every area of human endeavour, high politics is played and that that, more than anything else, may have been the cause or one of the causes of our country’s snub by AFCON and its organ. Nigeria ought to play a role in AFCON and other international organizations that reflects her size, the worth of her people and her contribution to the sustenance of these organizations. We should try to copy from the USA which does not accept any international body which fails to recognize her importance and interest.
It is comforting to hear that the new minister of sports, Owan Enoh, is tackling this problem. When the matter is sorted out we should have the courage to demand that we should be compensated with greater allocations for long omission for a long 18 years!
I also suggest that the minister should not limit himself to the refereeing issue alone. He should try and find out all political issues relating to all the associations. Sports has become a major tool for national and international development for any one to ignore the political dimension of it.
Our leaders at the various levels of government must learn to take some things especially sports more seriously. We may perhaps have to raise a high calibre set of sports diplomats who know about the high politics involved in sports and be ready to do some behind the scenes move to get Nigeria to benefit handsomely from where she is supposed to benefit from in reflection of her size and commitment to these games. There are so many small countries who benefit from AFCON and the rest far above what they deserve because they know how to play the politics.
Referees are very important in many sporting competitions, especially in football which is becoming the religion of most parts of the world.
This explains why the great Spanish team Barcelona is alleged to have kept the referee association in Spain on her retainership for years. May be that helps to explain why the team is one of the leading teams in Spain. May be also why Barcelona is not doing particularly well this year when its unholy deals with the referee association was uncovered! Who knows?
