Written by Henry Kester Ewruje

Ninety minutes on a football pitch can make a world of a difference. That the Super Eagles did not qualify from the group stage of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa is like a nightmare for most Nigerians. Football fans that have been looking over their shoulders since the match against Greece in Bloemfontein are now depressed as Nigeria ended the group matches with a 2 – 2 draw with South Korea in Durban and did not qualify for the knockout stages.

What is wrong with the Super Eagles? Many things are wrong with football in Nigeria. In truth, the Super Eagles team has never been at its best in recent years. Not all the matches played by the team in the past four years have been vintage performance. The squad only exhibited a steely determination to prevent a massacre in their 0 – 1 loss to Argentina in Johannesburg with an outstanding performance from goalkeeper Vincent Enyeama.

I talked to a hell of a lot of people. Managers, coaches, scouts, players and friends and what came back was uninanimous. They all felt that most of the players and Coach Lars Lagerback made mistakes in all their group matches. The technical ability of the Gaffer was tested in South Africa. He had to prove that his appointment was not a mistake. Personally, I doubted Lagerback’s ability to lead the Super Eagles to South Africa. He had nothing to offer because he was a spent force. He had not upgraded his coaching career in Sweden and failed to lead the Swedish national team to the world cup finals in South Africa which led to his resignation from the job showed that he was not the right coach and did not have the pedigree to take the Eagles to the next level in the world cup and beyond.

The gaffer failed technically and he adopted wrong tactics and formations in the three matches played. His starting line-ups were not the best. Not only that, in an apparent display of insufficient knowledge of the Nigerian players, he played some of the players out of their positions which affected the performance of the team. Most of the players had the reputation for shirking the grittier aspects of the game. The coach and the team made lots of mistakes. Even in the Pro Zone age of football where the coach’s team selections are influenced by the distance a player completes each game, there will always be no place for majority of the forwards he took to the world cup.

Nigeria is a country with a proud tradition of outstanding right wingers like Segun Odegbami, John Chidozie, Sam Okpodu, Tarila Okorowanta, Clement Temile, Dimeji Lawal, Pius Ikedia, Tijani Babaginda, Julius Aghahowa and Finidi George. However, the coach decided to field a player in the right wing whose lackadaisical style and a moment’s exhibition of madness earned him the red card and cost the team the match against Greece. Even the most creative elements of Lagerback’s side did not show any willingness to sacrifice themselves for the team. They could not ally graft to their craft.

.Now, the players are talking and complaining about Lagerback and his tactics as well as the playing time given to them. They are also complaining about the quality of players Largerback picked for the world cup. These same players had praised the coach after they played three friendly matches before the world cup. These players failed the nation and they are masters of the dark arts of media manipulation. These players are the delight of journalists. They are open mouths in search of a microphone. This a joke but nobody is laughing. The players to the South Africa 2010 world cup were not the best Nigeria can provide. Only the best players should don the nation’s colours in future competitions

So what is the way forward before the next world cup in Brazil in 2014?

I suggest that all the senior professionals in the Super Eagles who have been talking about throwing in the towel, should quit international football now. Most people might think that some of the senior pros are playing too well to retire from the national team. They might say this decision is a bit too hasty. But the players are big enough to be aware that they are taking a risk with football supporters because a few average performances will raise questions about their retirement from the national team.

The older players are the standard bearers. They are the ones that set the standard. The senior pros have to be the ones to show what it is all about and there is no better example than to quit now. The next world cup is in 2014. The younger players in the team should be groomed with new invitees to the Super Eagles to play in the next Nations Cup Competitions and then the world cup.

While people are taking the mickey out of some players, it is the Nigeria Football Federation, (NFF) that is mainly responsible for the problems of football and it needs a total overhaul. Every association has its values and at the moment, the NFF miss that. I think it is important for the nation’s football that the NFF should be overhauled because with the present players and coaches in the national team, we will never be a leading football country in the world in the coming years. Criticisms of the game are good for Nigerian football.

Presently, the NFF secretariat in Abuja must be littered with e-mails, faxes and letters from supporters who cover every generation. The message to the NFF is that they have failed the nation. The new chants on the streets are “give us a new NFF in the next elections”. Surely, the NFF cannot overlook the stream of correspondence. They should resign immediately and not wait until their elections in August, 2010. The NFF has failed to launch a bold plan to revolutionise the country’s football since they came to office. They have been unable to draw a strategic plan with enough concrete proposals to tackle the nation’s underachievement head-on. The plans of the NFF if any sound bland and boring. Their strategy lack obligatory buzzwords such as vision, purpose and values.

There is nothing uplifting and positive about the NFF with all its lies, deceits, crooked agents and absurd financial structure. The conduct and utterances of the NFF always send people laughing. While the zany twittering of the NFF is sending people into fits of giggles, I am not amused at the amateurishness that is rife in football coaching in Nigeria.

Amodu Shuaibu was sacked by the NFF as the coach of the Super Eagles for doing a commendable job by qualifying the team for the 2010 world cup and for winning bronze at the Nation’s Cup in Angola. He was accused of getting the results but not performing. This excuse was the cruellest joke. It will be recalled that millions of Nigerian football fans and other stake holders called for the removal of Coach Amodu. It would be remembered that the Presidential Task Force (PTF) recommended for Amodu’s sack and a sound foreign technical adviser to be employed. When Amodu was fired, the NFF sent people into reels of laughter by concluding the second-coming of former Super Eagles technical adviser, Frenchman Phillipe Troussier, whose most famous television documentary was how he spilled the blood of a hapless chicken in a bowl for his Burkina Faso players to lick ahead of a match.

The NFF is guilty of epitomizing triumph of style over substance. The NFF should be overhauled immediately. The new NFF should have an approved coaching qualification. Nigeria is the only major football country that does not have it. The new professionalism will spell the extinction of dinosaurs that prefer big talk to tactical awareness. They should launch a school for managers as part of plans to overhaul the game. Aspiring bosses should not be allowed to manage their clubs unless they have an NFF approved qualification. The important thing is to raise standards. Every other country has a mandatory coaching qualification. This scheme backed by the league managers association will also help the coaches get jobs abroad. Only Samson Siasia and Augustine Eguavon improve themselves by attending coaching courses and seminars abroad at their own expense.

Christian Chukwu failed technically during the France 1998 world cup qualifiers that the then captain of the team, Austin Okocha had to arrange coaching lessons for him under Sam Allardyce at Bolton Wanderers football club in England.

The new NFF should clamp down on agents by overseeing all transfer negotiations. Clubs should have their finances reviewed annually to make sure that all deals are above suspicion. Agents who cream millions of naira from the game should come under a bung-busting unit. Clubs should be required to tell the NFF where all the money in a transfer has gone and which agent is involved. Teams often get less than foreign clubs pay. But making all international and domestic transfers to go through the NFF will thwart such dodgy practices.

The new NFF should plan a radical shake-up of the games in the grassroots. A national football center should be opened. The quality of coaching in the soccer academies should be attacked and a professional women’s league set-up. Super clubs should be nurtured. A non-league club should have lots of sides of all ages under his wing. This will improve football at the community level and produce fantastic young players. The aim is to give the various national teams, the raw materials to be more successful. The hows, whys and wherefores should not be vague. Stakeholders should organize seminars and meetings for the NFF to go to, people to talk to and a new football culture to be introduced. The country’s youth development should be the envy of Africa. We already see the benefits of soccer academies and the youth teams of some organizations and clubs in the country.

This should be a wake-up call for an association that has been standing still. The NFF should not rest until there is a fundamental overhaul of the game. Nigerians are waiting.

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 Gives sex workers 2-day quit notice

Worried by the sharp increase in their activities, sex workers in the Federal Capital Territory have been given a 48-hour ultimatum by the FCT Minister, Senator Bala Mohammed, to leave the nation’s capital or face the wrath of the law.

The minister, who decried the steady rise in the population of prostitutes in Abuja, noted that they constitute a nuisance as their services add no value to the beauty of the city.

He gave them a stern warning to heed the ultimatum, noting that the FCT Special Task Force would be out as from today to arrest them.

The minister, who issued the ultimatum through the FCT Secretary for Social Development, Mrs. Blessing Onuh, while on a visit to the call girls at their respective joints on Saturday night, also warned men who patronise the girls to desist from the act as he promised that anyone caught would be treated like the prostitutes.

He said that to drive home the importance of the assignment to the FCT, the Task Force would commence arrest from today and warned the prostitutes not to take the matter lightly.

At Emprest Hotel, “which is the headquarters” of the commercial sex workers in Wuse District, where over 600 call girls were seen parading the streets waiting for prospective customers, the secretary lamented that most of the girls involved were under-aged.

In her message to the girls she said, “I’m out to instruct the girls that the FCT minister has given them 48 hours to vacate the city and quit the job. They constitute a nuisance in the city and the FCT administration will not tolerate them.

“We are also sending warnings to all those men patronising them to stop. Some of the girls are under-aged; it is child abuse. If we get you doing that we will get you arrested, lock you up and treat you like the prostitutes are treated.”

A patron of the call girls who spoke to reporters under condition of anonymity gave reason why he patronised call girls, saying it was due to the weather which made it difficult for him to spend the night alone.

“As you can see, it is rainy season now, it is not good for a man to just go home and sleep alone,” he said.

The man argued that the ultimatum given to the girls would lead to an increase in the charges of the girls who presently charge between N5,000 and N7,000 per night.

He said, “This decision now will make them to increase their price. Normally we take them home for N6,000 or N7,000 but now with this decision, they will increase it to N15,000 or more than that.”

At the hotel, one of the girls who refused to give her name disclosed that she relocated to Abuja when the governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Raji Fashola, demolished her apartment in Lagos. She however expressed her readiness to quit the job if given an alternative, lamenting that Emprest Hotel is like a sex camp where two prostitutes pair up in a room and pay N5,000 each daily while those who have more patronage take up a single room and pay N7,000 daily.

The secretary, after addressing the girls at Wuse Zone 4, made a donation of N50,000 to the girls after they complained to her that they had not eaten all day and she advised them to desist from selling their bodies for money but try to go into a more decent occupation.

Other places visited by the secretary where activities of sex workers thrive included Banex Plaza, Adetokunbo Ademola Crescent, Wuse 2, Rockview Hotel, Gimbiya Street, Area 11 and Agura Hotel.

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Written by Sulaiman Adenekan 

The need to have a clean environment and live a healthy life makes manufacturing of household and industrial cleaning products, like soaps and detergents, a profitable venture in Nigeria and beyond. There are several firms, especially multinational firms, that are into the manufacturing of these products. But the fact that the greater majority of Nigerians are within the poverty bracket, who often find it difficult to afford the prices of products made by multinationals and other big companies, will always make small-scale production of these products a viable option. This is because the prices will always fall within the people‘s affordability range.

The Managing Director, Lyd-Mar Industries Limited, manufacturers of Brymar range of industrial and household liquid cleaning products, Mrs. Maria Asuquo, who calimed to have started business at a micro level by meeting the cleaning needs of friends and neighbours, says the business is a profitable venture, if prudently managed.

According to her, about N350, 000 is required to start the business at the small scale level, covering the cost of packaging and other miscellaneous costs but excluding that of the mandatory registration by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control. On the other side, she says about N20m is required to start a large scale production.

Asuquo says between two to three employees are needed to start at a small scale level, while about 20 or more are required for a large scale operation, depending on the number of departments created.

On the requirement for a simple small scale operation, she says NAFDAC would always require, at least, four rooms- each for production, cloaking, storage of raw materials and finished products. In short, a rented apartment or a medium size three-bedroom flat build on a plot of land can serve as a starting point. However, an acre of land measuring up to 4,840 square yards (approximately 2,880 square metres) would be required for a large scale cleaning factory.

According to Asuquo, the equipment needed for the business include industrial mixers, storage tanks, filling machines, capping machines (optional), product coding machine, labels, plastic bottles, carton or nylon for final packaging.

She says raw materials for manufacturing of soaps and detergents can be sourced locally in Lagos, Aba and Ota in Ogun State.

She says that the business owner should have the basic knowledge of and passion for the business, adds that educational qualification is good but training will further give the required knowledge on how to operate the business profitably.

Stating the benefits of doing the business passionately, Asuquo says, ”When we started manufacturing for just friends and neighbours, the need became more than we could handle. This gave us an insight into what the business held and we decided to get NAFDAC registration for four of our products.

She insists that the market for soaps and detergent is not saturated, and there is still enough opportunity for those who can dare to venture into it. She, however, stresses the need for prospective manufacturers to identify their market niche.”

On the challenges facing the business, she says poor power supply, which adds up to the cost of doing business through the use of generators; and inadequate fund to finance operation and create good distribution networks and awareness for the products are some of the pressing problems that confront small scale production of toiletries.

According to her, quality products may be expensive to produce and there is the need to maintain quality and also produce more than demand in order to eliminate scarcity of products.

She says the government can help manufacturers by improving the power situation in the country. Government can also mandate financial institutions to develop special packages to assist genuine manufacturers.

Speaking further on the challenges of toiletries manufacturing, Asuquo decries the high rate of advertisement charges, saying that media outfits should put in place advertisement packages that promote products and services at cheaper rates to aid the development of SMEs in the country.

Another major small scale manufacture of toiletries, Mr. Bola Akintade, maker of Clean Total soaps and toiletries, says operating at a small scale level can be started with an asset less than N100,000.

”All you need is a two-room apartment, the mixing machine, bulk payment for raw materials and a good source to access packaging. Of course, this is usually made easy when the maker has a distributing van and a landed property of his own,” he says.

Recalling his starting point, Akintade, who is the Managing Director of AK Beauty, arguably the most popular local toiletry products in the Agege area of Lagos, says, ”Small scale production is a promising one in toiletries making. The immediate challenge is distribution, at the initial stage. But once people know the product and they have accepted it, there is no limit to the success that can be achieved.

However, he lists some of the challenges that can bring about failure to include lack of good knowledge of the production process, lack of access to fund, power and product adulteration.

”But some of these can be tackled through proper planning, adequate mentorship and an effective management process.

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