Unarguably, one of the factors militating against the growth of sports in Nigeria nay Africa is the menace of age-cheating. This malady, age falsification goes hand in hand with doping, as both have become Siamese twins that have been difficult to eradicate not only in Nigeria but on the continent.
GANIYU SALMAN highlights what motivates athletes to embrace age-cheating and how it has become one of the killing features of Nigerian sports.
Age-cheating in sports is a deliberate attempt by an athlete to act dishonestly and claim a falsified date of birth towards participation in a meet. In other words, this mostly happens when an athlete cuts down his or her age in order to be eligible to participate in an age-group competition.
It’s permissible for a 17-year-old player to play in the U20 championship be it national or international level but a 20-year-old player stands to be sanctioned should he feature in an U17 championship.
The adoption of a falsified age in sports is to gain undue advantage over other qualified participants, and no wonder, the victory of an overage athlete is always ephemeral, as nature will certainly place such an athlete where he or she belongs in the near future.
A study ‘The ethical and social implications of age-cheating in Africa ‘published in the January 2015 of the International Journal of Philosophy by Mbih Jerome Tosam, described age-cheating as a form of corruption in Africa.
The report pointed out that age-cheating is not limited to Africa alone as it has become a global moral issue that has only received little academic attention from social philosophers.
Also, the report noted that age-cheating is common in African countries where the civil registration system is either archaic or completely inexistent; as the shameful act is also one of the several corrupt ways citizens in most post-colonial African countries adopt as a way out of unemployment, chronic poverty, and political and economic deprivation.
The report did emphasise that age-cheating has apparently become one of the features of a third world countries as a result of inefficient governance, with Nigeria not being an exception.
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“Age-cheating is caused by lack of good governance which has resulted in economic hardship and the collapse of moral values in most post-colonial African states.
“Harsh living conditions in these countries have forced their citizens to look for diverse unscrupulous means of survival.
“To reduce the widening poverty gap, most Africans tend to either reduce or increase their ages, to suit job requirements in the civil service and especially in sports like football which has become very lucrative abroad,” stated the report.
There is no gainsaying the fact that today, age-cheating has become a culture in Africa and Nigeria is no exception, while its effects on sports have brought more harm than good.
Perhaps, the history of age falsification in global football began when the world soccer governing body, FIFA, introduced U20 World Cup in 1977 in Tunisia.
Before then, a 17-year-old player could play for his country’s senior national team provided he was certified fit medically and possessed the required skills that could match the adults or older legs in the team. Pele was 17 when he first played for Brazil senior national team and remains the youngest player to appear in a World Cup final [in 1958] where he also scored two goals in the 5-2 victory over hosts Sweden.
Nigeria banned for age-cheating
Nigeria first played at the FIFA U20 World Cup in 1983, won the bronze at the 1985 edition and made it to the final in the 1989 edition.
By the time the 1991 edition was to be held, FIFA’s hammer had descended on Nigeria as the country was found guilty of age-cheating.
Three of the players paraded at the 1985 edition – Andrew Uwe, Samson Siasia and Dahiru Sadi were indicted of falsifying their ages to play in the U20 World Cup; and Nigeria was handed a two-year ban from participating in any FIFA-organised tournaments and also stripped of the hosting rights of the 1991 U20 World Cup.
Not many football stakeholders took the case seriously then but today, the menace of age-cheating in Nigerian sports has attained a worrisome proportion.
FIFA introduces MRI
In an effort to discourage the use of overage players, FIFA introduced the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans of the wrist prior to the 2009 FIFA U17 World Cup, to ascertain the eligibility of every player.
To a certain extent, the use of MRI has helped in reducing this canker called age-cheating in global football.
Findings by Tribunesport revealed that a country may win any of these age-grade FIFA’s U17 and U20 championships, but the relevance of some of the players paraded to achieve the laurels would later reveal that they were possibly older than the ages they claimed.
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A Nigerian player in the late 80s had shown like million stars at a FIFA U17 World Cup and his exploits earned him a club contract in Europe. However, it didn’t take time before he fizzled out as a result of nature.
Administrator stops player from honouring U17 call-up
In 1999, a respected football administrator, the late Chief Femi Olukanmi, declined to release a player invited to the national U17 team, the Golden Eaglets, saying he had no player below the age of 17 in his team which was campaigning in the Nigerian top-flight.
The administrator in an interview with journalists revealed that he showed his 17-year-old son the photograph of the invited player in question; and his son uttered that the invited player was definitely older than him. The football authorities had no option but to accept the position of the late Olukanmi.
Also, a case of indiscipline was reported over two decades ago, as one of the invited players in the national U17 camp was caught to have taken beer leading to his eventual expulsion from the camp, meaning, he actually found himself in the midst of unsuitable peers not in the same social life category.
As a result of the introduction of MRI, Nigeria has adopted the system of presenting enough players so as to have a team that will eventually pass the screening. Prior to the 2009 World Cup, the Golden Eagles had to drop 15 players after the MRI tests.
“In order to protect the integrity of the tournament and in the spirit of fair play, FIFA has decided to conduct MRI of the wrist at the FIFA U17 World Cup Nigeria 2009.
“Randomly selected players will be tested in Nigeria under the supervision of FIFA’s medical experts,” FIFA had defended the introduction of MRI in a statement.
Some of the Nigerian players failed the MRI scans conducted in Abuja prior to the 2013 World Cup in the United Arab Emirates.
Also in 2016, 26 of the 60 players in the Golden Eaglets camp failed the MRI tests overseen by CAF a few days to the AFCON U17 qualifiers against Niger Republic.
However, Ademola Olajire, deputy director of communications at NFF as a result of the development put the record straight.
“We had over 60 players that had the MRI tests carried out on them and about 26 failed. These are new players we are trying to work with. One of the criteria before we can say we are sure to have the real U17 players is through the MRI test.
“It is what we did with the over 60 players to avoid age-cheating before we start playing on the international scene. We have 35 players in training right now after the MRI test and we are only required to get just 30 players.
“With this, we are sure of who we call U17 players. So, none of these players can call themselves Golden Eaglets because they’ve not played any competitive game. All we’ve been n doing is just to screen and work to get things done the right way,” Olajire had told TheCable.
Age-cheating cases in African football
Aside from Nigeria, there were reported cases where African countries had been found gulity of parading overage players in continental championships leading to disqualification:
A few years ago, the U17 team of Niger Republic was disqualified from the African Junior Nations Cup in Algeria (after reaching the semi-finals) when an investigation revealed that one of the players was 22 years old.
In May 2019, Guinea was disqualified from the U17 Africa Cup of Nations and banned from the 2019 FIFA World Cup for fielding two overage players.
In May 2014, Gambia was banned for two years for parading five overage players in a qualifier for Africa’s U20 championship, while in October the same year, Ghana was disqualified from participating at the 2015 Africa U17 Championship in Niger for fielding an ineligible player.
Also, Uganda was eliminated and banned in 2016 for fielding an overage player James Ahebwa in the U20 Africa qualifier. CAF found that Ahebwa, was in fact a year older than what Ugandan football governing body, FUFA, claimed.
Mbih also stated in his 2015 report that: “The domain where the disease of age-cheating seems incurable in Africa is in the domain of football. In fact, age-cheating is for African football what doping is for European and American sports.
“In African sports, the disease is not doping; it is age-cheating. The phenomenon of age-falsification is so common in African football that most players in junior leagues always almost have two or three ages, one real, and the other (s), or all, false.”
‘Players will bear consequence’
But according to one of the IICC Shooting Stars legends, Nat Adewale, athletes are always at the receiving end after their involvement in age falsification.
“You cannot cheat nature, these European clubs don’t joke with sincerity and they will always give you what you need to excel, but in a situation where a player lied with his age, the end result is not always palatable.
“Imagine, we have won the FIFA U17 World Cups five times [1985, 1993, 2007, 2013, 2015] and played in two finals of the U20 World Cup [1989, 2005] and yet, the products from these developmental championships could not take Nigeria even to the quarter-final at the senior World Cup.
“The truth of the matter is that our focus is more on winning these age-grade championships than developing the talents,” Nat, a former General Manager of Shooting Stars Sports Club (3SC) told Tribunesport.
The sad story of age saga at 6th NYG
In a bid to ensure that youngsters in Nigeria develop their potential, the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports Development introduced the National Youth Games in 2013 mainly for U17 athletes.
The NYG was designed as a developmental programme to help talented boys and girls to be unveiled and groomed to become professionals.
Immediate past Minister of Sports, Barrister Solomon Dalung, in 2016 reduced the eligibility age for NYG to U15, but the zeal by every state to win laurels at the Games became more intense, as the spirit of developing talents became secondary.
At the 2019 edition of NYG, one of the highlights of the event was the involvement of these ‘innocent’ teenagers in doping, as some of the athletes failed doping tests while report established that this shameful drama was recorded in weightlifting and wrestling.
Interestingly, the highlight of the 6th NYG which ended on October 22, 2021 at the University of Ilorin turned out to be age-cheating, which almost took shine off the Games.
The issue of age falsification at the Games gave the Minister of Sports, Mr Sunday Dare, goose pimples as he lamented in his remarks that measures would be put in place to address age-cheating in subsequent Games.
“The Ministry of Youth and Sports Development wants to declare that going forward, we will ensure that we adopt more scientific means of identifying age-cheat next time and mete out stiff penalties to the offending athletes and the state they represent.
“I want to condemn and express my disappointment about a few of the problem around age-cheating that continues to rear its head specifically even during this Games. The Ministry will consider the National Identity Management Card (NIMC) registration as a requirement.
“And others that will be rolled out later in our letters that will go out to the States and there will be need for all athletes to have an NIMC registration before they can participate henceforth. This document would be required, would be developed and we will work in conjunction with the organisation in charge.
“This measure is needed to avoid losing out on a possible potential medallist being screened out as overage while they are not or vice versa,” Dare said in Ilorin, adding “every effort put into grassroots sports development is a worthy investment and not a waste.”
Findings revealed that the alleged involvement of U15 players in age scandal has to do with synergy between their parents and administrators.
“The truth of the matter is that the administrators want result at all cost and that is why they would want to accept an athlete above 15 years to compete for their states so as to deliver medals to them; while innocent parents are helpless as laurels of their wards would earn them monetary rewards too,” noted Kunle Yusuf, Club Captain, Obafemi Awolowo Tennis Club.
The age saga at the 6th NYG was well captured by Nigeria’s national junior tennis coach, Ubale Mohammed, who witnessed how ‘age-cheats’ featured in the tennis event leaving qualified players in lamentations.
“To me, these people [administrators] are not sincere because some of the players they registered for tennis were ineligible; those I saw who played in the quarter-final and semi-finals are overage to be candid. This is not a good development for sports generally.
“The Ministry of Sports needs to work on this anomaly. Registering ineligible athletes for a competition is tantamount to fraud, cheating, which is not good for tennis.
“It would have been much better if the Nigeria Tennis Federation had handled the screening instead of the Local Organising Committee (LOC), because we know these players well. If you know a player’s age and the committee in charge of the Games screens him in, since he has been cleared to participate, there’s nothing anybody can do about it.
“Actually, there are some coaches who want to be sincere, but seeing other states bring in overage players, they too will jump on the bandwagon,” Ubale, who witnessed the competition said in an interview.
There were lamentations both from qualified U15 athletes who lost to their older opponents, as well as coaches and administrators who want to forget the Games in a hurry following the unpalatable experience of age-cheating.
‘NYG has lost relevance’
In fact, to the Imo State acting Director of Sports, Mr Emmanuel Metu, the main purpose of using NYG as a platform for the discovery of talents has been eroded through unholy act of fielding overage athletes.
“As far as I am concerned, NYG has no meaning at all. It should not be tagged a championship,” Metu told Tribunesport.
“In Imo State, we believe in playing by the rules but in a situation when we present qualified athletes only for us to have terrible situations of competing with overage counterparts, is it not pathetic?”
He also revealed the alleged method used in registering ineligible athletes for the National Youth Games.
“When they register an overage athlete with his or her photograph, they will then present a little girl or boy for screening who would surely scale through; and because during the event proper, they don’t bother to check the accreditation tag to conform to the face of the athlete screened; you will now see an adult coming out to compete instead of the screened athlete,” Metu claimed, adding if the organisers did not get the structure right, they should stop the Youth Games.
‘Primary school data will help’
According to former Head, Anti-Doping Committee, African Rowing Federation, Mr Femi Ayorinde, it’s really a difficult task to eradicate age-cheating in sports.
“In fact, the factors that are responsible for doping in sports are equally synonymous with age-cheating.
“The MRI test is not 100 per cent correct to determine the actual age of a teenager because the environment under which children grow differs.
“I want to suggest that we should go to the primary schools of the participants and verify the dates of birth which they registered. The irony however, is that are the States ready to carry out this investigation, rather than the birth certificates the athletes presented to them?
“It’s not the job of the Federal Ministry of Sports to verify the actual ages of these athletes, the States they want to represent should carry out this but because the States too want to win laurels at all cost, will they go the extra mile to ascertain the eligibility of these children?
“There was a case of an athlete some years back who registered different dates of birth in three national competitions and because I had records, I discovered that this athlete in question used the same name right but reduced his age in every competition by two years. When I presented the case with documentary evidence before the then Director of Sports Development, Chief Patrick Ekeji, he ordered that the athlete be banned for life from sports participation and that ended the case,” he told Tribunesport.
Ayorinde, a retired Chief Executive Officer, Nigerian National Anti-Doping Committee, noted that age-cheating remains a systemic problem that requires only a change of orientation right from parents to administrators to curb.
“So, we are in a dilemma in Africa as far as age-cheating in sports is concerned, but it can be checkmated and reduced to the barest minimum with a well-structured mechanism. Parents need to help their children too, unlike in the past, records of births today is not an issue except parents or guardians who choose to aid this anomaly, age falsification.
“If we say the National Youth Games should only be for primary and secondary school students, what about those children out there who are out of school?
“How many of these children have international passports in the first instance? The majority of them don’t have international passports until after their secondary education with different dates of birth already used in several documents. In fact, there is what we call sports age which is used instead of actual age by some of these athletes aided by cultural factor. The irony is that only the international passport remains a valid document to verify the age of an athlete in any international meet,” Ayorinde, a pharmacist submitted.