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The chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Sports, Honourable Godfrey Gaiya has advised the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) to put their house in order as well as look beyond the Federal Government’s subventions for funding their programmes.
Speaking on the controversies that have enveloped the Football House after the Super Eagles won the last Africa Cup of Nations in South Africa, the legislator fumed at the situation where the NFF is crying for lack of funds instead of utilizing the advantage of being African champions to woo sponsors to invest in Nigeria football.
Gaiya also wants the NFF not to be over-reliant on government subventions which according to him “will never be enough to fund all the eight national football teams that the NFF caters for in their fiscal budget.”
He, however believes that all these funding problems and others would be finally put to an end when the NFF bill is passed into law by the National Assembly.
“I believe that the Nigeria Football Federation has every potential to be making substantial money from private sector. But I keep saying that you don’t get sponsors for a bad product. Before Afcon 2013 Nigeria was neither here nor there. Some small football nations were even rated higher above Nigeria in FIFA rankings then,” Gaiya told Goal.com.
“So if you are ranked 53 in the FIFA World rankings and you are competing with nations ranked no 1 to 10, you should know that very serious sponsors would prefer to go and spend their money on the best ten nations in the world. But now that our ranking is improving, I believe that they can get better deals and by that get more money.
“As long as they can make money outside the government, the better for the NFF. I also keep telling the NFF that as regards the issue of funding, they can get sponsors outside government. But it is unfortunate that they find it easier to go to the government and beg for money.’’
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