The Under-17 Age Scandal

Comfort Obi

In the aftermath of the sacking, by the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, of five bank Managing Directors/chief executive officers, namely: Batholomew Ebong of Union Bank, Cecelia Ibru of Oceanic, Erastus Akingbola of Intercontinental, Sabastian Adigwe of Afribank, and Finbank’s Okey Nwosu, it is easy to forget the odium brought upon Nigeria by the Ministry of Sports and its football administrators. While the arguments for and against the CBN action, especially, the ill-advised publication of big-time debtors rage, not many people seem to be remembering the tar brushed on our white cloth by the House of Football. Here, therefore, I intend to wean myself from the CBN, its governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi and the billionaire debtor’s club, and concentrate on the age scandal which has presented us to the world as cheats. More than the banking industry confusion, which will drag for many years before the law courts, the judgement of the under-17 age scandal is immediate. It has brought Nigeria to public ridicule.
Nigeria is a football country. When it comes to football, Nigerians are united. We forget our ethnic and religious differences. When, therefore, FIFA awarded Nigeria the hosting rights of the U-17 FIFA World Cup, everybody rejoiced. And even though, as usual, preparations have been slow and shabby, people are looking forward to it.
Some otherwise barren stadia which dot the country are being refurbished. Football is politics. It is a money spinner. Any country granted hosting rights makes the most of it. Nigeria is not different. It has spent money and time. The opportunity to showcase our wares has come. Nobody wants to miss the opportunity to bask in it.
But now, all that could come to nought. Nigeria may just host the championship, without being part of it. For two years, and counting, the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, gave the impression that Nigeria has a team in camp. The claim has turned out to be a monumental lie. What the NFF and the U-17 coaches camped to present to the world are a bunch of cheats, some of whom they connived with to disgrace Nigeria.
The rule guiding the competition states that players must be under 17 years of age. It was written in simple English, simple language. On a number of time, FIFA had warned that it would penalise any country which flouts the age-limit. Yet the NFF pretended that all was okay; that the players they had in camp were within the age bracket. Those who had seen some of the players disputed their ages. They were too old. How can university graduates be under-17s? But the NFF dismissed those who worried as unpatriotic. Now, the chicken has come home to roost. And we are in a deep s..t!
Apparently, the NFF did not take FIFA’s warning seriously, until the world football governing body threatened it was going to use the Magnetic Resonance Imaging, MRI, to confirm the ages of the players. The MRI is a procedure which uses magnetic field and pulses of radio wave energy to make pictures of organs and structures inside the body. In this case, it would evaluate the ages of the players from the degree of fusion of the distal radius on the wrist. The findings will then be compared with those of similar age. This threat put the NFF on a high jump. And now, to our shame, the truth is out. Of the 36 players tested in camp, 15 failed the test. The truth then is that Nigeria has no team for a tournament which would start in October.
Anybody who has followed what goes on in Nigeria’s football industry will not be entirely surprised. For years, many Nigerians had known that our football industry is corrupt. It is ruled by nepotism. Ethnicism also holds sway. Those who run the show are usually enmeshed in one scandal or the other, chief among which is corruption. Nigeria, it seems, has always broken the age limit rule. The luck has been that usually, the cheats got away with it. Years back when Nigeria won one of these age-bound tournaments, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, SAN, had issued a statement contending that the boys who won it were age-cheats. The football authorities at the time reacted angrily, calling him unpatriotic. Truth is, Gani was right. And what was right then, is still right today.
Many of those who claim to be under – 17, 20, 21, et cetera, are indeed fathers. They bribe their way through. Those who recruit them, and invite them to camp encourage them to cheat. They go and fabricate birth certificates, or swear to fake affidavits. In a country which neither keeps accurate birth or death registers, anything goes. High Court premises are filled with touts who, in connivance with court officials, fabricate even death certificates. People brazenly change their birth dates. Great-grand fathers and mothers are still working while the youths roam the streets. They refuse to retire, flaunting made-up ages gotten through affidavits.
Stories of how players pay in order to get invited to national camps abound. Nobody cares about the image of the country. Everybody knows that there is scarcely anybody playing in the local or national league who is under-17. The place to find such players are in the secondary schools. But our football administrators are too lazy to look. They are too lazy to experiment. They are too lazy to groom new players. Which is what drives them to pick players for an under-17 tournament from the local and/or international league.
This is a national shame. With less than two months to this year's competition, what does Nigeria do now? It will be impossible to groom a new team before October. The result is that Nigeria may not survive the first round of the tournament. And this, a tournament which it is the host, and had won twice.
The questions to ask are: Who invited these players to camp? Who screened them? Where were the doctors from the Sports Ministry and the National Sports Commission? This is a scandal with a monumental result. The only thing that can wipe this shame off us is to publicly bring those responsible for it to book. Only then will people take their responsibilities seriously. And only then will FIFA stop looking at our players with suspicion.