The Nationwide League One (NLO) is the third tier of Nigerian domestic football and is recognised as Africa’s largest grassroots league. Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the NLO, Dr Olushola Ogunnowo, in this interview with Sporting Tribune’s TAOFEEK LAWAL spoke about the innovations being put in place to transform the league. Excerpts:
How has it been running the Nationwide League One for over a decade?
I was appointed as the Secretary of the NLO in 2013. That was when the league was engulfed in a crisis of match-fixing and other issues. So, my responsibility was to come and streamline things and make sure that such things don’t happen again and that the league should be rebranded. I saw it as a very huge task and I’m a professional.
I didn’t study another course apart from Physical Health Education, Sports Sciences, Sports Administration and Management. So I sat down and I had a template which I actually worked with and the results started rolling in. I was happy to have worked with visionary board chairmen. I worked with Alhaji Ahmed Kawu. I worked with Alhaji Alkali. I worked with the current President of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) Alhaji Ibrahim Gusau. He was with me for one year in the league.
At present, I’m working with His Excellency, Honourable Silas Agara. And I must tell you, they have actually reshaped my thinking. Politically, we are forming policies for the league and my responsibility is to implement those policies. And these are policies that have changed the league and has turned out to be one of the most sought-after leagues in Nigeria and Africa because we are always proud to have the largest number of football clubs in the same league in Africa.
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The task given to us by the Presidential Task Force set up about six years ago was to make sure that we build the league to satisfy the yearnings of the youth in the country. And that was why we have this kind of growth in the league.
We actually went into the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) portal to see the statistics of youths who are part of the game of football. And we discovered that if we have this higher number of people that are involved in the game of football in an unorganised setting, that our responsibility is to make sure that we bring them in into the organised setting so that it will reshape their career.
The Nigeria Football Federation will be better for it, because by the time we bring them to the organised setting, then they will be able to train under the right coaches, under the right management. And with that, we have better football players in the country. Because if you allow them to remain the way they were, then those that call themselves “coachee”, that did not go to coaching school to know the right training to give to the right age, will just continue to destroy the career of these young ones.
That was why we have to expand the league to accommodate more clubs so that it will satisfy the total number of youths involved in the league. And we are happy that we were able to do that over time. In 10 years, we were able to increase the number of clubs in the league. As it is now, we have about 520 football clubs, both in Division 1 and Division 2.
And we have a set target of a 10-year master plan that they gave us, which will be going to 1,000 football clubs. But as it is now, we have just surpassed our five-year master plan given to us. So with that, we were able to ensure that the right thing is done. And I took my time to look at successful leagues at this level in developed countries, look at what they do correctly and we set out to do the same thing and the result is playing out for us.
What has the NLO done to empower coaches to be able to meet emerging challenges?
The first thing I did for the coaches and the records are there. There is this body called Coreva spearheaded by Yomi Kuku. He brought them to Nigeria. Coreva is a coaching platform. I think Berti Vogts and some top coaches around the world are in charge of it.
NLO was the first to accept them to train our coaches at the grassroots. We had an event with them around 2016, 2017. Every year we usually have programmes for the coaches. I call tell you that we’ve done coaches’ training with Berackiah coaching agent as well.
We’ve done at least four events for the coaches and on the part of the administrators, we’ve done about three or four and we still had one last year where we brought a lot of them.
Because of our large number, we usually do it through zoom but the one for the coaches was done physically. The last we did was in all the zones. The late Baba [Chief Adegboye] Onigbinde was the one who spearheaded it and a lot of coaches were involved.
The Nigeria Football Coaches Association was part of it, the NFF Technical Department was present and conducted the training for the coaches because we insisted that no uncertified coach will be allowed to handle clubs in the NLO. We are still on that and we keep on advising them to go for further coaching courses. We have been doing a lot for the coaches. Every year, It is always in our agenda and calendar of events involve coaches’ training, administrators’ training.
What have you been doing in terms of sponsorship of the league?
Then, we had MTN. MTN supported our projects. They were paying for the secretariat expenses and other things. That one ends last year because they said they want to go into another venture. We will be having one or two partners that are working with us, but the major one that we really had was our title sponsor, New Year Mega Lottery which suffered the fate of a battle that they did not know about. So, that was what has happened to the sponsor.
We are trying our best to make sure we get sponsors for the league.
There’s nothing we can do, it is their money. We have met with many prospective sponsors and the excuses they always give you will be surprised. These are the things that actual hinder us, you rarely see this happening in other countries. We really need strong regulations to get things right in this country. It’s a terrible situation, but we just have to keep on going. This area of sponsorship for the league is so important, and we are still talking to a lot of prospective sponsors about it.
