SUPER EAGLES: President Tinubu should act now – Akpoborie

He was a member of the Golden Eaglets that won the first FIFA U17 World Cup in 1985. Following that breakthrough tournament, Jonathan Akpoborie, a former member of the defunct Julius Berger FC of Lagos went abroad for a professional career. His sojourn took him to the USA and eventually Germany, where he spent most of his professional career. He also played for the Super Eagles.

The former Hansa Rostock, Wolfsburg and Stuttgart striker spoke with Solomon Nwoke on why Nigerian football has stagnated and the way forward. Excerpts

It’s been a while since you’ve been away from football. What takes your time these days?

Have you played golf before? Golf has actually taken me away from almost everything except my business. Golf is an interesting game. Sometimes I play tennis, but golf has actually taken me away from all other sports. Very, very interesting.

Apart from golf, what other business are you into?

I work with a German company that has brought a cocktail drink into Nigeria.

I’m trying to help them to market that drink. At this moment, we are trying to go for marketers that will help us put the drink into the market.

What is the difference between playing golf and playing football?

It’s very simple. When you play football, sometimes you don’t put up your best game.

Your teammates can actually save you. This is an individual sport. On the day you don’t play well, you won’t get help from anyone because nobody is ready to help you. Through your card, your performance will show. It is you that is playing. It is you that is swinging. Mentally, I think golf is more challenging than football.

Let’s digress a bit to the Super Eagles. As a France 98 Super Eagles star, what is your view on Nigeria’s struggles in the FIFA 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifiers?

It’s unfortunate that Nigeria may not be going to the second consecutive World Cup.

It’s actually very annoying. It is disgraceful. But I cannot tell you that it is entirely the fault of the players.

The players have their own faults but it is largely due to the organisational aspect of the game.

The NFF and the people around the Super Eagles are not taking responsibility. If you don’t organise well, you will not perform well. We kind of overlook everything regarding the organisation and everything the boys will do before the game.

But these boys, the majority of them come from Europe and they play in a system where everything is well organised. So if they come and things are not well organised, I’m sorry, they cannot give you an answer.

What do you mean by that?

Of course, that’s what the answer means. You have 11 players and you can tell that these players are not giving their best. We have an administrative office here and there. I’ll give you an example with the last game we played in South Africa. We played Rwanda on Saturday. Can anybody give me a reason why we played on Saturday?

The South Africans played on Friday because they know that they will play on Tuesday against Nigeria. You can see that they purposely took us to a field that is bad and to a high altitude, where our boys would get tired easily. We went there late.

We played on Saturday and then left on Sunday. We should have actually tried to play our game on Thursday, travel on Friday and that would have given our boys three days to train and to get used to the weather before they play against South Africa. But we did not. We now played late, travelled on Sunday, trained on Monday, once, then played on Tuesday.

Now, if everybody is looking at the game, they say, ah, after the first half, the boys were tired.

Of course, they will be tired because they did not acclimatise. That is the organisation. Those in charge of the organisation, the NFF don’t seem to have that clue.

When I was playing, we used to go a week before to get used to the weather, before we now play against a team. You know, then your lungs are bigger because they now get used to the high altitude.

Those little things, they look really small, but they are big when the results come in.

Is it lack of knowledge on the side of the NFF not to have thought of that?

Well, that is something for the NFF to challenge.

You know, if I was in the NFF, that would never have happened because if we actually protested to FIFA, they would have shifted the date for the games.

It is unfair and I cannot understand why, before the beginning of the qualifiers, the NFF failed to see this as a threat and why would they agree to that.

Recently, John Obi Mikel called on the NFF board to resign if Nigeria fails to qualify for the World Cup. What is your take on this?

Well, you see, everybody has his own view of what is actually happening. If it was Europe, maybe a team like Germany failed to qualify for two World Cups consecutively, you’ll not need to tell anybody to resign. All of them will resign on their own, even if it was not due to organisational issues. But Nigeria is different. The NFF is tied to politics. We need to take our football away from the politicians. If we do not take our football away from the politicians, it will continue to drop. They should remove the state ownership of teams. We have the crowd in Nigeria to actually follow our football. We are over 250 million people in Nigeria.

We only need 10 million people to follow our local league when it is well organised.

That is what the Premier League is doing and if we do just half of what the Premier League does, we will see that we do not need one layer from the government. But they should just close their eyes and say, OK, we want to do it. It will not be rosy the first five years. But I assure you, before that happens, when you draw a plan, you will see results. And when you see results, Nigeria will be at the top level of Africa. Because the quality of our league at the moment is very poor just because the organisation is bad.

I cannot even switch on the TV until I want to watch a game in the NBA.

If I want to tell you the problem of Nigeria, it will take me the whole day, because most of our league games are played on synthetic. If synthetic was very good, FIFA would be playing the World Cup on synthetic pitches. The World Cup is played today on grass. If synthetic was really good, the Europeans would invest money in their league and everything. The Premier League would be playing on synthetic.

I think the synthetic pitch is good. I went to school at Brooklyn College. We had a synthetic pitch, so I got used to synthetic. I left Nigeria playing on grass.

Now, getting to Brooklyn College, I found out the bounce of the ball on the synthetic pitch is different from the bounce of the ball on grass.

When people ask why our teams don’t do well in Africa, of course they carry them to play on grass.

They will beat them very well.

Our league is not really organised very well. In the past decade, it was an abridged league, about twice they were handpicking who won the league. That is it. Nigeria is shameful.

There are so many things we want to talk about if we are talking about Nigeria football.

But you need a plan.

The next person that will come into the NFF will tell you, okay, we are coming.

The next thing they will tell you, okay, they are asking for the opinion of everybody to pick our national team coach. Who does that?

When everybody was shouting at Finidi that he did not do well, the NFF did not tell anybody that they were the ones that invited the players before they appointed Finidi George. Nobody did.

To be honest with you, in the last decade, I saw the Super Eagles play the best football while Finidi was incharge. They did not give him enough time and he was not supported.

Now, the Malian is here. I have not seen what the Malian has done to deserve handling the Super Eagles. I am still waiting to see if we qualify. Yes, if we do not qualify, I see no reason why they brought him. I am saying that Finidi should have been left alone in that situation.

Yes. I just told you that he did not invite the players he used in prosecuting the matches he supervised as the coach then.

Then who invited the players?

The coach is supposed to invite the players. Then when he did not invite the players, what do you expect him to do as a coach? There was about three or four months break before he was named coach.

What happened in those three or four months? Why do you wait that long? Why did they wait for that long? Those are the questions we keep asking everybody. We are in a society where the NFFs are immune to blame. Nobody wants to talk about them.

The biggest problem I see in Nigerian football, if we can get rid of it, I am sorry, is our press. If the media report exactly what is going on, Nigerian football will be better. If you do not qualify for the World Cup by October, you should go.

Do you think Chelle will continue or go?

Regarding the philosophy of football and my experience, I will not fire him.even though I do not like him. I will not fire him.

We have to wait until after the final qualifier where we will now draw a new plan with a coach who will now take us through the next World Cup qualifying series and if we take that coach, we have to stand by him until after the World Cup.

What kind of plan?

I do not play politics. I do not belong to politics. I have left politics for these people who want to play politics.

I have a lot of experience that I can help develop our football. But since Nigeria does not want it, I have decided to sit on my own. I do not want to fight anybody to go into the NFF. I do not want to do that.

It is almost impossible for somebody like me to win an election into the NFF. It is impossible for somebody like me. If I even try I will not get one vote.

Are you advising former players like you not to step in?

We cannot. Based on the NFF statutes, we do not even have representation in the voting, That is how useless it is. But I am sorry. When they talk about the players union, it is actually nonsense. When Rufai died, I heard so many things being said about the experience and all of it.

I am here (at Ikoyi Club 1938) almost every day. We have more than 10 insurance directors here from different companies. I can sit down with any of them today if I want. I can sit with him today and draw the deal for the NPFL.

Not just the NPFL, but for all the academies in Nigeria, everybody. Iin Germany, before you step into the grass to play football, you have insurance.

If you do not have one, you cannot train with the team. So it will be compulsory.

You need to ensure that those stories you are hearing now regarding ex- internationals you will not hear in the future. But nobody is doing anything about it. We have the players union. What do they do?

When somebody sits, everybody goes there and they seek for money from one governor or the other.

That is bullshit. I am sorry. You need to bring organization. .

You see, the music industry, at first everybody was running towards the politicians. Oh, support me. I am this musician. I am that, immediately they left politics, look at where our music is. It is at the center of the world. And they make money regardless of what happens to the economy of Nigeria.

During COVID conomically everybody suffered. But football was thriving. Why? Because it was not tied to the government. We need to separate our football from politics. If we don’t, it is going…

All around the world, ex-internationals are taking over the running of federations. Why is it impossible in Nigeria?

It’s not possible in Nigeria. Please go and check the constitution of the NFF, you will see that it’s not possible. They have not made it. I think in that regard, the presidency has to get involved before they do that, they have to get in contact with FIFA, because right now it is a cabal that is actually holding us hostage.

Nigerian football can do better if taken away from all of those individuals that are holding us hostage.

Because in the last 20 years, I have never seen any development in our football or seen any difference.

Every year we keep saying the standard of our football has fallen. We cannot afford to fall deeper.

In that regard, they need to blow that thing open.

The Premier League for example, it is open when votes are cast that one knows who the President or Chairman is. But in Nigeria they just pick anybody they feel they can control as politicians. That is the problem with our football.

But the problem with the ex- Internationals is that we are not together. And the way it is, I don’t think we can come together because everybody has his own different name. Some people have actually sold their names to the present NFF. So you know, it is complicated. If we want to really sit down and discuss football, I am ready.

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