Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) president, Ibrahim Musa Gusau, had a world-exclusive interview organised by Gbamm! Loving Football, which took place on Thursday, 22 June, and aired on Radio Now 95.3FM.
In the interview, the NFF president fielded questions wide range of questions, including those Gbamm! collated from the media and fans, concerning the Super Eagles, Jose Peseiro‘s contract situation, NFF’s finances, and the Nigerian League, among others.
Completesports.com’s ADEBOYE AMOSU and JAMES AGBEREBI who monitored the session, present the transcript of the interview session.
Excerpts…
Gusau fields questions from the hosts of Gbamm! Loving Football Zoom session
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What are the things you put in place on assuming office as the NFF president?
Gusau: Immediately after our election, we made an attempt to amend the statutes to go with the reality. We have been working to make sure we have something in place that will be acceptable to all stakeholders in Nigeria.
We have heard of difficulties with financial issues the NFF is facing. What are you doing to unlock that aspect, especially with a big brand like the Super Eagles?
That has been a challenge. The Federal Government is really doing its best. There is no organisation you go to now that doesn’t have debts to settle.
In our case, we came on board and met a lot of debts on the ground. A few years ago, an oil company, AITEO, signed an agreement with the NFF, but unfortunately, they couldn’t fulfill the obligation because of some issues.
We tried all we could do, but basically, the non-compliance of that organisation to an agreement with the NFF affected our finances seriously.
A lot of things could have been sorted out if they had honoured that agreement. It affected the payment of coaches because they had agreed that they will be paying our coaches.
You also go into the area of the Federation Cup. It affected the competition too. We came on board, we see all these challenges. We wrote a letter to them through our lawyers and we are hoping they will fulfill their contractual obligations. By the grace of God, if we are able to get money from them, we will settle some of the debts we are owing in the NFF.
You know we can only attract investors if we are doing the right things and our national teams are doing well.
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We are trying our best. This season, we started with the league. Thank God there is little improvement. Everyone can attest to the fact that there were improvements in the just concluded season.
Concerning the national teams, we are beginning to change the narratives. We are doing our best to give our teams what they need to perform. We try to attract investors and make the atmosphere conducive for them to make them contribute because it is only through that, that we can succeed.
There were a lot of court cases in the past, but we are now trying to make things easy and comfortable for private investors to come on board.
Would you want the NFF to be financed by the private sector or the government?
I sincerely want the NFF to be financed by the private sector. I prefer this because I don’t like going to the government for money all the time when money is not even there.
It is important we attract the private sector to bring in the money that we need. As I said earlier, I prefer to get my money from the private sector than the government.
What are your immediate plans to restore the confidence of Nigerians in the NFF and Super Eagles?
The immediate plan is not to only get the confidence of Nigerians but also the private investors. The Super Eagles are our biggest brand and if they are doing well, we know a lot of corporate sponsors will come in to support us.
As I said earlier, we will try to do our best to give them an enabling environment to do well. I do my best to interact with the players, sit down with them and know what the challenges are. There are so many things we will share with Nigerians to make sure we get things right.
Super Eagles are the biggest brand we have in the NFF. Once we get it right with the Super Eagles, we are good to go. We are doing our best to support the players and the technical crew.
What are your plans to develop the Nigerian League?
I’m not sure, maybe you didn’t follow the league well last season. We did well to reform the league. We had a team that didn’t lose all through the regular season for the first time in the history of the Nigeria Premier League. That is Bendel Insurance. If we can get that, we can say we have done well. We will do our best to maintain the momentum.
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Throughout the season, we didn’t have TV coverage except for the Super Six, but we are working hard to put that in place for next season. From next season, we will try to have like two or three matches on TV per week. Before now, no one can say when the league will start and when it will end, but that is a thing of the past now.
Now with all these reforms more home-based players will get opportunity in the Super Eagles.
What is the NFF doing to support private sector participants trying to grow and develop football, like organising the Higher Institutions Football League?
What we are trying to do is to make the atmosphere very conducive so that whoever is coming must be sure that, at least, will get value for his investment. For example, before now people don’t bother to go to the stadium to watch our matches because no team will go and lose in their own home. And the thinking was ‘why should I go and watch, for example, Plateau United, playing at home and they must win? Now we try to bring confidence into the minds of the people – that you will go and watch real football.
Anybody that is coming to invest in football must be sure that the home atmosphere will be conducive for him to have good competition for him to get the best out of his team or opponent. That is the only way you can support them and make them attracted to the environment.
But if an investor is spending his money in football and then you travel for a match and has a good team, then all of a sudden his team will be rubbished at all cost – they must beat his team. There’s no way you can continue to invest. So what we are trying to do is to make sure we make the environment very conducive and ensure that, at least, we do the right things and have the best competition in the league and football environment.
There’s a rumour that your administration is planning to conduct an opinion poll in order to ask football fans whether Jose Peseiro should stay as Super Eagles coach, is it true? And what are your thoughts on backing an indigenous coach?
Well, actually we have that plan to put it in front of Nigerians, to hear their views because we try the foreign and local coaches and it seems we are having some kind of problem. Maybe we did not get it right – with the right person. We are surely going to push it to the public to hear their views on whether we should continue with Peseiro or he should go.
On the question of whether we will go with an indigenous coach, we are still going to push that to Nigerians in the poll – to tell us whether going for a local coach would be best for Nigeria at the most or go for another foreign coach. We will get their views then look at it and do what we are supposed to do as a board and come out with a decision.
Why is it that organising a press conference never seems to happen with the Super Eagles coaches?
A lot of journalists had the opportunity to sit down with the coach and ask him a lot of questions and he responded to them. If you go through the media officer of the team, you can get all the necessary interviews even with the players. But the thing is that anytime the Super Eagles team is coming for a match, they come for a maximum of one week. And in each of the matches they are going to play, there’s going to be a press conference and also a pre-match press conference. So through those press conferences, it is enough for every journalist to be part of and ask whatever question they want to ask the coach.
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But as I said earlier, there are press conferences that hold before every match and post-match. So I think those are enough. I don’t think there should be special press conferences when there’s an official one. Every journalist knows there’s going to be a press conference before and after every match.
So maybe there are no organised press conferences by the coach. Maybe we are now going for a tournament whereby the team has the opportunity to come in two, three weeks, or one month definitely we must organise a press conference for the coach to ensure that he tells the world and Nigerians his plans.
Nigeria has a rich history of producing exceptional talents. Every two years these young talents need to reach the World Cup either at U-17 or U-20 levels to make their way professionally, but those who don’t make it are mostly forgotten. In what specific ways will your administration address this?
What we are doing is rallying around all the domestic leagues. And if our league is doing well and more money is coming into the league it will attract a lot of these young players to stay and play in Nigeria. Sometimes, some of them that even travel outside the country to seek greener pastures are just being deceived by agents, and after one year you will not hear their names again. It’s not only when they are in Nigeria that you don’t get to hear their names again, it’s because they didn’t take the right decisions and before you know it they are forgotten.
But now that we are trying to restructure the league and if in the next one/two years, it gets to the level we are expected to get to and more money comes into the league a lot of players wouldn’t think of going outside to go and play professional football. You see a player travel to remote countries and earn $1,000. I think it’s better for me, as a footballer, to stay back in Nigeria and receive N300,000.
Enyimba’s Adekunle Adeleke (23) vs Bendel Insurance’s Adodo Stephens during the 2023 NPL Super Six
But most of these clubs, especially in the lower leagues, don’t have the money to take care of these players. So that’s why we feel if we make things work right and more money come into the league, a lot of these players will not be wasted, you will see them being attracted into the league and you will see the best out of them.
Why is it so difficult for Nigerian coaches to announce their squad publicly to enable them to explain the reasons behind their selections and why some players are left out?
For example, if we are camping the junior teams like the U-17 and U-20, when you go to their camps, in every training, you will find more than 30 journalists standing there and they want to be asking questions. And even when the coach releases the list today, they will still ask him that same question. So the coach would feel reluctant to answer questions that have been asked before. So that’s why the coaches feel it is not important for them anymore to organise a press conference to unveil their lists and try to defend them.
How challenging do you find running the NFF?
Not managing the NFF alone, even trying to manage a football club even in the lower leagues, then you will know how challenging it is. Nigeria is a big country and a footballing nation, every single family has a footballer in the house – people who are interested in what is happening in the NFF.
So it has to be very challenging because even to respond to people’s advice, suggestions – they are so enormous. Before I thought of going for the NFF job, I knew what I’m going to face.
As I said, I started managing football from an early stage, managing at the state level before getting to the national level. At the national level, I was on the board for almost eight years before God said this is the time to manage Nigerian football.
I know it’s going to be very challenging, but we are doing our best to ensure that we meet the expectations of Nigerians, but it is really not easy.
What is your position on tapping the best available eligible diaspora talents?
It’s something that we must do because every Nigerian, wherever he is, we need to give him an opportunity to represent his country. We are doing our best to ensure that at least we have a robust scouting network to get an accurate record of our Nigerian players wherever they are in the world. And it is only with that we can get the best out of the young Nigerian footballers.
What would you say would be a successful tenure for you as NFF president?
Number one; I can look back and say we really achieved something in the domestic league, especially the professional football league, and number two; I can look back to say we tried our best to make sure that the football environment is a little bit united because everybody is given the opportunity to give his contribution which is lacking in some years back. Number three; I would say there were no crises concerning the national teams going to tournaments or at the tournaments.
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