Football administrator Yemi Idowu did not mince words. Nigerian football is in a “catastrophe” — and he says we saw it coming.
The vice-chairman of the 10-Year Football Development Masterplan and founder of Nathaniel Idowu Foundation says the only way out is a brutal return to the grassroots. And fast.
“How Can We Go To U-17 Without U-17?”Idowu’s diagnosis was simple: we skipped the foundation.“How can we go to African under-17 competition and we don’t have Nigerian under-17 competition?” he asked. “How can you have state under-17 if you don’t have local government under-17?”
For him, football is a pyramid. Local government feeds the state, state feeds the region, region feeds the nation. Right now, that base is missing.
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He described 16-year-olds who have never played on a full-size pitch every week, yet are thrown into an African Championship in 6 months and a World Cup in 12. “It’s not possible,” Idowu said.
“Go back to the basics.”He also defended recent government spending, saying more money went into sports between 2023 and 2026 than all previous years combined. “The reform is there.
They just have to follow what has been recommended.”On leadership, he was ruthless: “Anybody that calls himself chairman, he has never played football before, he doesn’t run a team, he cannot deliver football for you. Full stop.”
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Kill The Travel, Localize The League
Idowu’s toughest prescription was for the National League. With bad roads, no trains and few flights, asking a team to travel from Zamfara to Cross River is “a recipe for collapse.”His fix: let states and zones play at home, then bring winners together for a short, World Cup-style national championship twice a year.
“Stop lying to ourselves. All your money is going to transport instead of players’ salaries,” he said. He added that reform can be done in “20 days, not one year” — if Nigeria stops forming committees to review committees and starts building infrastructure to produce players from every corner of the country.
