Loutishness, Poor Officiating Sabotaging The Efforts Of NNL Board

The Nigeria second tier league “Nigeria National League (NNL) has been marked by hooliganism as clubs in the second tier of the league are desperate and doing everything within their power to gain promotion to NPFL.

The videos of hoodlums who have no knowledge and the rules of the game are in circulations attacking referees across match centers of the second tier league.

Few weeks ago, a viral video outside the main bowl of the Dipo Dina Stadium showed players in a brawl with suspected hoodlums leaving some of the players hospitalised.

Also a video was in circulation seeing some hoodlums attacked and assaulted referees in the match between Gateway Utd and Ikorodu City.

Despite all efforts made by Chairman of the Nigeria National League (NNL) Mr George Aluo to make the league as one to be reckoned with through coverage and streaming NNL matches by Global TV in Nigeria football ecosystem showed some clubs are not going by his visions.

Mr George Aluo stated few months ago that before now, the officiating in NNL have been very poor compared to this ongoing campaign, where he noted that clubs also acknowledged that officiating has been top-notch with clubs winning on the road with statistics backed up.

In the first stanza of the league about 47 away victories and which gave about 37% of the matches played were recorded, which the chairman noted that this has never happened in the history of NNL.

He went as far to give kudos to referees as officiating has greatly improved in the league, and where the referees with poor officiating cases were promptly sanctioned and recommended to the referee committees of NFF.

With this efforts made by the league body, few referees are still involved in poor officiating, two referees who were involved in the game between Jigawa Golden Stars and Sporting Supreme FC in Dutse, Zaharadeen Nasiru and his assistant Usman Auwalu were expelled by the Refereeing Development Unit of the NFF.

Also the man that handled Warri Wolves vs Ikorodu United, Henry Akwara from Imo State, was also delisted, alongside the one that handled Sokoto United vs Kebbi United, Calabar Rovers vs Ekiti United and Ijebu United vs Osun United.

With all this immensely efforts made by the Chairman and the led board of NNL, it showed that the league is trying all what it could to put the league in the right directions but some bad eggs are messing up their efforts.

Proper sensitization and orientation should be done for fans, players, and supporters that football are not won through violence but with hard work, team efforts, determination for them to remove the bad eggs disrupting the league in other for the second tier league to thrive and give the league body to achieve their aims and objectives they had laid down for the most important league in the country.

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Michael Odetunde

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Odetunde Michael Sunday is a Journalist of his generation. He combines the talent and ability of Print, Online and Broadcast Journalist in a rare manner.

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