Sports minister, Sunday Akinlabi Dare has charged Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) to come out with novel ideas and far-reaching steps that will help take the round leather game out of its recent dwindling fortunes, megasportsarena.com reports.
With the under-23 team, Olympic Eagles having failed to qualify for next year’s Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan, a moth after the female squad, Super Falcons also fumbled in their own efforts as well, Dare is worried that Nigeria’s football fortunes are plummeting.
The Olympics qualification ouster for both teams also come in the wake of poor outings by the country’s youth squad, Flying Eagles at the FIFA U-20 World Cup earlier in the year in Poland and most recently by the Golden Eaglets at the FIFA U-17 World Cup in Brazil, all of which Dare says are ominous signs about the future of the ‘king of all sports’ in the country.
Dare expressed his concern during a meeting he held with NFF top shots at his officer in Abuja, after which he explained that he met with the football governing body’s management to get an explanation for the country’s poor results in recent outings and find ways out of the wood.
Monday’s meeting with the sports minister had NFF president, Mewlvin Amaju Pinnick in tow with the body’s first vice-president, Barrister Seyi Akinwunmi, second vice-president, Mallam Shehu Dikko and general-secretary, Dr Mohammed Sanusi.
In the aftermath, Dare took to social media to explain this rationale in calling the meeting, then added that the NFF, football stakeholders and the main actors have to pick up the pieces where they are in order to chart a better course for a return to glorious outings in future.
Dare stated: “I led the Ministry of Youth and Sports in a meeting with the NFF. A single agenda meeting: to provide an explanation to the country as to why we suffered several failures recently – towards taking appropriate and far-reaching steps to improve Nigerian football.”