Is the BBC killing Nigerian Football?
Take a honest account of the sad state of affairs in Nigerian football – corruption, lack of money, the lack of love from the locals, etc. Bring in a “journalist” working under a deadline to produce a catchy, quotable punchline to the story to make it instantly promotable. Add a healthy helping of the old “money + football = English Premier League = very, very evil” formula.
The result? A butchered report on Nigerian football, glossing over the real issues of corruption and mismanagement and littered with selective quotes designed to support the notion that the Premier League is killing Nigerian football by “just being so much better.”
Nothing about how Europe has exploited Africa for fun and profit for centuries, and how that practice has morphed into economic and cultural domination. Nothing about the lack of conviction shown by FIFA to address the problems of player trafficking. Nothing about the failure of international governments to help bring about meaningful reforms in Nigeria. Nothing about the failure of an economic system that floods a poor country with easy oil money without ensuring that the society can handle this influx responsibly and not disintegrate into a subculture of domestic slavery.
No. Premier League killing Nigerian Football. That sounds much better than saying “We’ve failed Nigeria,” doesn’t it? Certainly sells more.
In the same vein, could we not argue that the BBC is killing Nigerian football by failing to live up to its responsibility to deal with the real issues? This is beyond the fun and games that we play with football transfer rumours and misreported quotes. This is real life, and the fate of many nations, not just Nigeria, is at stake. But instead of informing, we’re still working on selling.
Bravo.
Topics: English Premier League, Features, Help Football, Nigeria, Off The Record
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Typical BBC journalism. The ‘big’ leagues have dominated support for years in the smaller and less developed countries. The fact is that the product they produce is far superior and the top players from other countries want to play there. There are many countries in Europe where this is the model and has been for a long time.
July 29th, 2008 @ 12:49As the EPL has matured into the best and most popular football product in the world, the developing nations have been seduced by it and the huge fan bases continue to feed the growth and expansion.
Like economies, football has gone global and young kids everywhere want to support the best and most attractive teams.
As you say, the underlying issues are what should be addressed in Nigeria and the whole premise of the article is ..well….typical BBC sensationalism.
well typical BBC, in fact western media rarely say anything positive about africa. its always dudes fighting, children dying and corruption. yes these things happen in africa, cant deny that but the media, esp the west just dwell on that. i guess its a case of ‘you can see a speck in anothers eye and not the log in your own(something like that)
but after reading that report i have to admit that i do largerly agree with it. its almost the same with kenya. we havent completed our fifa goal project, officials always haggling over money and control i mean its just crazy. to make it worse talent is really gettin wasted. With this situation, many of us, including i(man united till i die) , would rather watch the decent football in the premier league rather some load of rubbish played in our stadiums. guys here only head to the pitch to watch our leagur when the prem is over but come august stadiums rarely fill up. its like playing in an empty room.
so does thhe EPL kill our local league. no. its those money hungry, power sucking officials who want everything.sometimes i would not blame those leagues exploittng us, we pay our players peanuts and we tottally lack management
July 29th, 2008 @ 19:28after re reading the article i conclude kenya is completely the same. people want decent football with less managment wrangles presented by our incompitent and highly corrupt officials. why should we waste time on that kind of crap yet i can watch blistering and kick ass EPL and laliga football
July 29th, 2008 @ 19:32It is unfortunate that this kind of act is being conducted by various groups of managment, apart from blaming BBC our football managment aswell as league in nigeria is being corrupted,we must remove the dust in our own eyes first inoder to see clearly to remove others own.
July 30th, 2008 @ 15:26Nigeria football is full of corruption，we should not say that bbc is killing nigerian football
January 29th, 2009 @ 06:13When the truth is said, people take it to be killing the game, this has however set the Nigerian football 20 years backward. Persons who do not have any business running football are there only to enrich themselves. They now organise boys clubs only to take these players to lower leagues for peanuts. They now eve bribe officials for us to win matches, the league now goes to the highest bidder, they now sit down to dictate what happens in who plays for the nation. Ask them what development programme they have? They even pay some of our hungry journalists now to write for them. WHO IS DECEIVING WHO i ask. If government is sincere to develop the game in Nigeria, let them first take off their hands in sponsoring clubs, turn these clubs into community teams give loans to people to run the clubs and bring returns. Let all the state F.A chairmen leave the NFF as they are government staffs, let the state owned teams represented on the league board and NFF vacate their seats as they are not club owners, they are only on contract, Government can fire them at any time, let those who sponsor clubs from their pockets take the saddle and see if our football will not improve, government is corrupt so why would its product their candidates not be corrupt?
June 9th, 2009 @ 06:57