BENIN CITY – Edo State Deputy Governor, Rt. Hon. Comrade Philip Shaibu has declared open the second National FA (Football Association) State Chairmen of Nigeria retreat and NFF (Nigerian Football Federation) Annual General Assembly.
In his remarks, the Deputy Governor reaffirmed the state’s resolve to combine football with education, to provide a fallback position for athletes.
According to him,, “We already created a programme where any Bendel Insurance footballer who is dedicated to the club for a long time before his retirement would be given full sponsorship for a coaching programme.”
He went on to say that ” we have started that now with our longest serving captain of the club, Charles Omokaro, who is going for a one year coaching programme, sponsored by Edo State Government.
He has spent about 11years with the Bendel Insurance. He retired this season from active football. We want him to learn how to be a coach.
These are the kinds of programmes we are putting in place for athletes to make them have a fallback position so that they don’t turn out liabilities to the society.
We have rebranded Bendel Insurance and Edo Queens football clubs. Our branding is inline with NFF and FIFA standards.
Even coaches and players can be fined for not keeping to set standards. Players are paid as and at when due. They get their winning bonus at match venues. These are rules we have decided to follow strictly.”
Speaking on the innovative move of government to development the round leather game in the state, Comrade Shaibu said “recently, we made salaries of both clubs the same. We have consistently paid them their salaries for the past 3 years.
They are moving into their brand new accommodation with world standard kits and regular feeding. They can only do well to the extent that their welfare is well catered for. A player that is not well fed cannot do well. To this extent, we feed them while in camp.”
He thanked the FA/NFF for choosing the state for its retreat and general assembly this year, assuring them of government’s adequate support.
He said, “We are supporting you to host the FIFA women’s world cup and for choosing Edo State as a venue for it. We have video assisted referee (VAR) facilities that can assist us to host even UEFA matches.
These facilities meet national and international standards. The Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium has facilities to host matches which require the use of these standard facilities.
I pray that the resolution reached at the end of the meeting should be put to good use, so that at the end of the day, Nigeria would continue to be the number one sporting nation in Africa and possibly win the world cup.”
He also thanked the Nigerian Football Association for finding it in their time to have a retreat programme every year, noting, ” You would not know how far this retreat goes until you start reaping from it. This time is the time you have to review and compare what you have and learn new lessons on how to move the round leather game forward.
For you to have programmes like this shows that you are retooling and rejigging in terms of administration and changes associated with the game, especially FIFA regulations and rules.
For other Federations that work in both inside and out of Africa, this is the time to check and know what we are doing wrongly to know what we are doing to be able to understand them and at the end of the day, go back to our states to implement them.
I congratulate the NFF because they have been doing well in terms of representing our country in the international federation at CAF and FIFA level.
I am very proud of your representation because if you don’t have good representation, no one would look at your side. We appreciate. We as a state would continue to support that vibrancy that we have seen our football move forward.
For us as a government in Edo State, we have observed that football at our local level has been having some setback.
These setbacks were as a result of our state being on recess in the area of sports development, this is why we have been having problems at youth games.
“We won Kodak ’85 when we were alert with sports development. Most of the players that formed that team were from the then Bendel State. Same happened at Scotland ’89.
“Looking forward, we discovered that we need to help the Nigerian Football Federation. We as a state government decided to revamp our sporting facilities to reposition sports and turn Edo State to the hub of sports it used to be in the old.”
He later encouraged them to go on a guided tour of the Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium to assess the state of the art facilities while also mentioning on grassroots development in sports and facilities put in place in the eighteen local government areas of the state.
The chairman of chairmen comprising the 36 states and Abuja on retreat, Alhaji Ibrahim Gusau, expressed the optimism of his colleagues to be in the state.
Speaking from the angle of experience garnered from the maiden edition he revealed, ” The Inaugural one was held in Lafia, Nasarawa State in 2017. I thank the Deputy Governor and by extension, the Governor of the State.
In 2017, after our retreat, we proceeded to Jos, Plateau State, for our inaugural meeting but the Edo State Government is magnanimous enough to host us…we are grateful
The essence of this retreat is to bring us together to bond and interact and appreciate the enormous task of developing sports from the grassroots and study obstacles we might be battling with in our individual states, to know better on football management.”
