President of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), Ibrahim Musa Gusau, said the Federation is not relenting in its oars to ensure that Nigerian referees, especially the younger generation, are introduced early into mainstream officiating in the local league as well as at the continental level for early exposure.
Gusau stated this during the NFF match commissioner seminar themed “Match Commissioning and the Challenges of Match Reporting” which was held on Wednesday at the Merit House, Abuja
According to Gusau, the NFF is aware that the elite referees needed to be succeeded by young, mobile and energetic referees who are already making their marks already in the League.
The NFF boss said about 10 young referees have been given the opportunity to showcase their talents and ability in the ongoing football season and they have not disappointed while adding that it is a deliberate step to prepare them for continental engagement in the nearest future.
“One of the major targets for us is to see that we have younger referees. And if you’re not aware, I want you to know that just this season, I tried to ensure that 10 of our young referees, who are below the age of 20, were introduced into the Premier League and they doing exceedingly well. Those are the steps we are taking to ensure that at least we get to the continental level because we’ve to start from there. If you look at most of our elite referees, they are aged and it won’t see easy to achieve what you wanted to achieve by taking them to the continent.
“Almost all of them (the young referees) have participated in one match or the other within the four weeks that the league has commenced and there is no complain about it. By the grace of God, that is the way to go. In the next couple of years, we are going to go back to the continent, ” Gusau told Sporting Tribune.
Commenting on seminar, the NFF boss said it aims to bring people of integrity and honour to project Nigerian League to the outside world and also to consolidate on the gains recorded in the past two seasons.
He added that those to be considered as match commissioners must be up to the task by passing their written tests, showing competence and write good reports and submit same two hours after every match. While assuring that NFF will take the welfare of the match commissioners as priority, Gusau said whoever cannot meet up with the requirements will be instantly allow to leave.
“The match commissioners will be assessed and tested and anybody who doesn’t meet the required level is definitely going to be out. And also in the area of their reporting, we are going to take their reports to see what is coming in and from there we are going to get some culprits and we’ll show them the way out because we cannot take any chances.
“What we are doing is to build our league especially our domestic league. You can see the little changes we have started to see in the league and therefore we must continue with the momentum and ensure that at least we move forward and everybody is happy.
“And by the grace of God we’re going to be on our feet to see that things go well as far as the domestic league is concerned,” the NFF President added.
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