By Harry Awurumibe
The leading candidate in this Friday’s Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) presidential election, Dr. Christian Emeruwa shone like million stars during Sunday’s Arise News television- organised The NFF Presidential Debate.
This is even as
Dr. Emeruwa who was by far one of the best debaters out of the five NFF presidential candidates used the forum to reveal many contributions he has personally made to improve domestic and national football in Nigeria in his capacity as the Founder and Head of Safety and Security Department of the Confederation of Africa Football (CAF) in Cairo, Egypt.
According to him he has masterminded the training of 20 people from Premier League (PL) clubs in Nigeria in Safety and Security duties by CAF Safety and Security Department to be able to enforce safety and security in Nigeria league matches but those personnels have not been allowed to operate by Nigerian system.
He disclosed further that he has trained three Match Security Officers in the NFF who are doing well when given assignments by CAF outside Nigeria but who are not utilized at home just as he said that only one of the three has got a look in while the other two are sadly overlooked by football authorities in Nigeria.
Said he: “Well, thank you. I think some of us the administrators we don’t blow our trumpets about what we do to help Nigeria. I will give you a short example of what we did a few years ago, I mean as recent as two years ago. When I was at the NFF , my boss, Barrister Musa Amadu can testify, I was already working for FIFA, we wrote severally to the Nigeria Football Premier League (NFPL) that we want to organise training programme for Safety and Security Officers in each of the premier league clubs but they never responded to this”.
“But when I was fortunate to be appointed as the Head of Safety and Security Department in CAF, the first thing I did apart from the normal operations we have to activate, don’t forget it’s a new department, was to carry out a pilot training programme for Premier League clubs Stadium Safety and Security Officers for 12 African countries. We call it Intervention on Safety and Security Programme for Premier League clubs and Nigeria was amongst the fortunate countries we trained” .
“So we trained 20 Safety and Security Officers, one from each of the 20 Premier League clubs in Nigeria but till date as we speak the guys we trained are still sending me messages that nobody has given them the opportunity to function”.
“Where as in countries like Uganda they have gone further they are training Stewards as we speak .Senegal has trained over 600 Stewards, they have kicked out Policemen from doing safety and security duties in their league.
Uganda has kicked out Police from managing their league. From the same people we CAF trained.
South Africa already has people that are paid as Security Officers for clubs”.
“So if you are asking what I have done for football in my country, the question is will I come from Cairo to force them to work when they have refused them to work”.
“Another thing is we have 49 CAF Safety and Security Officers, Nigeria has the highest number, four persons and three are in NFF and these three we send them to other countries to work.
We send them out to work in other countries but sadly in Nigeria they are not allowed to function in the NFF there”.
“They are organising international friendly completions but these people will not be given opportunities to serve”.
“As I said, out of the three only one is working but what can only one man do”.
“So if we don’t come to the media to advertise what we are doing for Nigeria it does not mean we are not doing anything for Nigeria. The thing is we should be dedicated to our duties and not to pay lip service to it”.