Arguably, the most successful football club in the history of Nigerian football is Enyimba FC.
The Aba-based club has won the Nigerian Premier League more times than any other club (9 times). It is the only Club to have won the CAF Champions League trophy (twice). The club’s records and fixture at the top half of the Premier League have remained consistent and unblemished for over two decades.
Last week, ‘the People’s Elephant’, the last amongst the 4 clubs that represented Nigeria in the ongoing 2024/2025 CAF Club competitions Competitions, was also knocked out of the second-tier CAF Confederations Cup. In their last two group matches, they lost to Zamalek FC of Egypt in Cairo by 3-1, after playing a drawn game in Aba in the first leg.
They are the last of the 4 Nigerian clubs that qualified and failed (again) to make any headway in the two continental CAF competitions this 2024/2025 season. The other three teams are El Kanemi Warriors FC of Maiduguri, Remo Stars FC of Ikenne and Rangers International FC of Enugu.
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These ‘giants’ collectively represent the continuing failure of Nigerian clubs to make an impact in African club football in the past 20 years, the last time a Nigerian club won any of the two CAF trophies in African football.
What does this mean in terms of Nigeria’s domestic football development where success is measured only in Trophies and Medals won?
The question is pertinent because Nigeria has the largest number of African players in the professional football ranks abroad. Yet this high production rate of players good enough for the leagues abroad, is not reflected at all in the domestic leagues at home. The wider implication may even be that the migration abroad is depleting the teams at home and reducing the standard of the domestic leagues. You cannot eat your cake and have it.
This ceaseless and uncontrolled exodus of quality players from domestic matches must be partly responsible for the low quality of the league and also for failure to attract the attention and interest of investors and sponsors. The absence of great players in any league is like tea without sugar.
There was a time (some 30 years ago), at the start of the professional league in Nigeria, when companies (including the giant telecoms companies) were falling over each other to sponsor the Nigerian league with stupendous offers. What has happened to all that fire and enthusiasm?
Even this past decade, or so, an oil company ‘poured’ resources into Nigerian football, including the league, even when at a time that the reputation of the league was at its lowest, riddled with charges of reckless corruption, and absence of basic infrastructure, proper management and elementary coverage facilities without which the business can never thrive. All sports thrive mostly on TV coverage.
The oil company left unceremoniously for reasons unknown, but not unconnected with the reputation of the league.
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Whatever happened to that kind of enthusiastic attraction of sponsors to Nigerian football despite the poor image it conjured at those times in the past?
When the idea of an external body to manage the Premier league was first introduced and a League Management Committee, LMC, operating independent of the Federation was mooted and later embraced and introduced, it was assumed that massive changes would take place that would bring an end to the shenanigans that marred earlier management. For example, It was assumed it will bring to an end the era of government clubs and government interference in the affairs of domestic football which were assumed to be the oxygen for corrupt practices affecting the transparency and functionality of the league.
That LMC came and went after over a decade of operating in a cloud of obscurity and secrecy, with charges of non-accountability hanging over its head like the fabled Albatross in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘the Rime of the Ancient Marina’.
The operators were seen to be benefiting more than the league itself. They were let go.
In the past three years, a new League Management Company, LMC, has been born under a new leadership with a new spirit and with slightly clearer roles and agenda. It is assumed that things will be different and will yield different fruits.
The new LMC brings in a strategic new partner, GTI Assets Management, to guide the league down a new route into proper management and prosperity.
Supported with initial funds raised and provided by GTI, the LMC has surely been improving the organisation of the league by stabilizing its operations, assisting the clubs financially at the start of every season, facilitating the payment of critical indemnities of major officials, and running the leagues by avoiding any major crisis of confidence and trust.
The main challenge remains the economic prosperity of the clubs and the league. No one knows the full details of the relationships that the LMC has with GTI, other partners, investors and sponsors until the anticipated revenue starts pouring into the league.
Such revenue will help keep the best players at home and attract retiring ones still good enough to return and play in the domestic league. But which comes first? Is it the chicken or the egg?
However, there are a few other sideline developments of interest to highlight here.
During the 2024/2025 season, of the 20 clubs in the league, 18 of them are still owned and funded by State governments. Private clubs have either been muscled out or are unable to meet the demands of running clubs without major income sources.
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Only two clubs are privately owned in the Premier League and both are using proceeds from other sources, particularly the trading of players abroad, as the primary source of their revenue. This inordinate selling of players has triggered an avalanche of players’ migration, creating the biggest single problem with developing domestic Nigerian football.
Many clubs have shifted their gaze from developing players and winning trophies to the easier and more lucrative business of trading in players abroad through proxy clubs and academies.
The consequence is damning. Nigerian players have become cheap and abundant commodity, with many traded for peanuts to clubs in countries with low football pedigree, like Sudan, Mauritius, Ethiopia, Benin Republic, Malta, Albania, Bangladesh, and so on. These are all ‘professional’ football destinations for Nigerian players now.
Unfortunately, these destinations are a ‘death zone’. The players that migrate there simply disappear into obscurity, forever.
The product of this is that Nigerian clubs become so weak they are unable to win any club trophies in Africa.
The last time a Nigerian club won any of the CAF competitions was in 2003/4, and 2004-2005, through Enyimba FC. That’s all.
Since then, only feeble attempts to get to the finals by Dolphins FC (once), and to the quarter finals (twice) by two other Nigerian clubs, have taken place.
If success at continental club level is the parameter to measure success of a country’s domestic football (and there is no other yardstick to use) it is no surprise, therefore, that the Nigerian league is NOT amongst the top-five in CAF’s latest ranking. That speaks volumes.
Where is the claim, therefore, by some stakeholders coming from that Nigerian football at domestic level is making giant strides?
The situation is so bad that two players from the current home-based Super Eagles team preparing for CHAN may have left camp and headed for Sudan and Albania.
Once players go to several of these countries they evaporate into oblivion. Yet, the movement abroad become a flood into which emerging stars are swept away before they mature. Yet, without them, football at domestic level will be tasteless, like Tea without Sugar.
No matter the incentives or measures introduced to improve the league, clubs will not win championships, and the leagues will not be marketable without quality players being produced and incentivized to remain in the domestic leagues.
The Nigerian Premier Football League is a machine with many moving parts that must all move in harmony to produce an attractive league good enough to market.
Without excellent grounds around the country, excellent television and radio coverage facilities and programs, without stemming the uncontrolled migration of players abroad, every effort to lift the league to another level will remain on the tarmac.
I learnt that GTI Assets Management have tremendous experience in investment and management, and actually spent 10 years researching and studying the Nigerian league and how to turn its fortune around. I hope that all of these will be brought into play to ignite the flames of genuine development and success.
