Nigerian U-Turn The Right Thing To Do

The Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan decided to reverse his decision to ban his country's team from international competition for two years. The decision also overturns the call to dissolve the Nigerian Football Association.

Mr. Jonathan attributed his decision to the amount of support for the team and association in his Facebook page. The other possibility is that he caved to the threat of sanctions and expulsion from FIFA which prohibits government interference in football/soccer.

I applaud the decision to reverse the ban on international competition as well as the reverse of the dissolution of the Nigerian Football Association. Sports and politics (as well as sports and government) should be separated.

Nigerian Football simply needs to think about what happened at the 2010 World Cup and learn from the experience.

Wilson Ajua (a lawyer who is owner of Nigerian club team Rainbow FC) has talked about the need to separate sports from politics at the local level in his country. He challenged Nigeria to rebuild from below.

I would start by putting the sport above political appointments as well as bringing people from Nigeria who have played football/soccer abroad to teach their expertise. The next ingredient would be applying discipline and consistency in many areas of the sports.

While these are proposals, Nigeria will have to address what it wants to do in order to prepare itself for future sporting events.