Federal Government has warned that arrangements were in an advanced stage to unleash the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on managers and other stakeholders in the Nigerian league found culpable of match fixing, stressing that it would henceforth treat any incident of match fixing as
a criminal case.
The Minister of Sports and Chairman National Sports Commission (NSC), Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, who made the disclosure, while presenting his scorecard during the Mid-Term Report on the Progress and Achievements of President Goodluck Jonathan administration, in the on going ministerial platform programme in Abuja on Monday, also attributed the successes recorded in football to the restoration of peace in the Glass House.
While chronicling the Federal Government’s contributions in repositioning sports from 2012 till date, the Honourable Minister argued that the efforts and achievements would not be sustained should Nigerian youths continue to leave the country in droves to join obscure leagues in the world or languish in the Chinese jails for drug-related cases, adding that making Nigerian league viable would checkmate the trend.
His words: “Despite our achievements in sports, we still face some challenges.
There are still many Nigerian youths who leave the shores of this country in the name of playing professional football in obscure countries that don’t have anything close to professional football.
There are many of them in Vietnam, Iran, Azerbaijan, among others countries in search of professional football.” “It has assumed even a more dangerous dimension now that hundreds of Nigerian youths are languishing in Chinese prisons. People have deceptively used them to traffic hard drugs outside this country.
We are bent on revising this trend and that informed part of what we are doing in the Nigerian league. “Since the setting up of the League Management Company (LMC) anybody watching Nigerian league will notice that there are tremendous improvement.
The quality of football has improved, the quality of officiating has also improved. With the way we are going, what it means is that very soon, Nigerian league will compete favourably with other major leagues in Europe and other parts of the world,” he noted.
Speaking further, the Mallam Bolaji said: “In the past, it was difficult to find a visiting winning a game. Last season, the home teams won almost all the games, but under the current setting, visiting teams are recording away victories.
What it means is that the quality of officiating has improved.” “Sports thrives on integrity, as long as people cannot go to watch the game because they believe that the outcome of that game has been predetermined. Match fixing is a criminal offence and that is why we are working with the office of the Attorney General of the federation to set up a special committee with the EFCC to monitor the games.
“If we find anybody who has taken part or who has colluded to fix any game in anyway, we are going to treat the case as a criminal offence and the law will take its full course. We are going to restore the investors’ confidence and bring the spectators to the stadium,” he assured.
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