Elegbeleye decries politicians’ involvement in club management, wants youth development prioritized.

By

Jennifer Okoye

The Chairman of IMC Gbenga Elegbeleye has decried the involvement of politicians in the day-to-day running of football clubs.

Elegbeleye also wants our clubs to give premium attention to youth development.

“Government involvement in football management is the main problem that’s why you see politicians imposing their will, imposing footballers on football clubs, saying use this one and most of them are not good enough to play in the premier league, they consigned them to feeder team and they would be paying the monthly salary, that's why I say football is not CSR, is not cooperate social responsibility, is a commercial venture, the government should hands off, look for ways to privatize their clubs and get investors to buy into it or if they want to get involved it's sponsorship, then they should stop putting politicians as club chairmen, putting politicians as managers of football clubs, just to settle supporters, that is why our football will not be fully professionalized. You cannot tag it a professional league if you don't have professionals running the clubs, that is it, that is not enough, that is how you will now see, instead of having a real feeder team you will have older generational players who cannot make the first team being in the feeder team”

The IMC chairman wants our clubs to take youth development more seriously,

 “My advice to the Premier League clubs is that they must have their own feeder team if you go to most European clubs, you will see they have their own feeder team even in North African clubs, they have feeder teams, where they grow talents to take over from the old ones. We are going to start Youth League very soon, if we are still here, from the feeder team, from that pool, Nigeria will be able to see under 17, under 20, some of them will graduate into their main team, that's my own advice and again having the female team should be compulsory, now that CAF has made it compulsory that if a team is going to play any CAF Champions League or Confederation Cup, you must have a female team, if you don't, then they will disqualify you’’

Explaining the difference between LMC and IMC Elegbeleye said  “The LMC means League Management Company now we are not using a company but Nigerian Premier League Limited it is still NPFL, instead of the LMC, it should be Nigerian Premier League Limited that's our own way of seeing it not using the word company.

The manager of the league is Nigerian Premier League Limited, just like you have the league management company LMC but it is NPFL. IMC is an interim body, and interim management committee, because NFF is yet to set up the body as managers of the league, when the body is set up it will be Nigerian Premier League Limited, no longer IMC of Nigerian League Company.”

What do we expect in the 2023/24 season,  “Well in giving you an answer to that, I will rather delay the answer, we are just an interim body, we have done our assignment and our assignment is over and then new season will be started by a new body completely, it is that body that have the right to say this is how we want to do it, we gave reasons,  I explained to you and the entire country when we started that this is how we want to do it and we made the best of it and we were able to do it and get the best out of it, so when the NFF set up a new body, that body will be the body that will be able to channel a new course again and give directions, i would say policy directions, directions on how they want to manage the system and the expected outcome of it.so our own is we have done our best and before we start we gave the impression and let the world know what we wanted to do, so this new body by the time this new league will start, the new body that will be set up by the NFF, would be able to talk about their own input the outcome or output of their affairs, expected outcome of their own planning, more like a matter of saying this is what we would do, how we are going to do it and this is the result we expect from it, the input, output and outcome strategy is all about them not about us any more, our tenure has expired and when your tenure is expired you don't talk about those that are supposed to take off with their system.’’