NIGERIA FOOTBALL FEDERATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF FOOTBALL IN NIGERIA
ABSTRACT
The purpose of the study was to examine Nigeria football Federation and development of football in Nigeria. To achieve this purpose, six researcher questions were posed and four null hypotheses postulated for their verification at 0.05 alpha level. A descriptive survey research design was used for the study. There was no sample in the study; hence all the 223 respondents were used. The researcher designed the checklist, questionnaire and documentary information proforma for data collection. There were 82 items reflecting checklist on the appointment and recruitment of NFF board members, management staff, technical crew, national football players and provision of football facilities while twenty four items were generated and included in the questionnaire. Five experts in physical education, sports and recreation validated the instruments. The final draft of the questionnaire had a 4 – point rating scale of Very High Extent = 4, High Extent = 3, Low Extent = 2, Very Low Extent = 1 which addressed sections B, C, D and E on the extent of Nigeria football federation as regards provision of football facilities by NFF as index of football development in Nigeria, the extent of funding of football in Nigeria through NFF as index of football development, the aspects of football programmes that are improved by the Nigeria football federation, the extent Nigeria football federation contributed to football development in Nigeria and to which extent Nigeria football federation official ranks contributed to success of Nigeria football respectively. Cronbach’s Alpha reliability method was used to establish the reliability of the instrument. The respondents consisted of 16 NFF board members, 21 management staff, 48 technical crrew and 138 national football players in Nigeria football federation. The mean score was used to answer the six research questions. One-way Analysis of variance (ANOVA) statistic was used to test the four hypotheses and also Scheffe’s post hoc analysis (pair wise comparism) was further used to test the significant difference in the mean scores of the official ranks. The following were the major results of the study. The Nigeria football federation did not have fair and equitable provision of football facilities in national zones of Nigeria, the Nigeria football federation had some impacts in funding the game of football in Nigeria, and the NFF did improved aspects football programmes especially the recruitment of indigenous coaches for national teams. The 1, 2 & 4 null hypotheses were rejected, while hypothesis 3 was accepted thus (4.149>.003, 3.092 >.017, .855 <.492 and 5.693>.000) respectively. Subsequently the implications of the findings for development of football in Nigeria were proffered among others; the inability of federation to ensure equitable appointments of staff, recruitment of technical crew and selection of national players. This forms the basis of disaffection among various groups in Nigeria, therefore the government stalwart mare football development in Nigeria. It was recommended that since the ministry sports and social development has failed to ensure fair and equal appointments and recruitment in NFF, there is need for establishment of monitory or evaluation units in the Nigeria football federation to monitor or evaluate development of football in Nigeria in accordance with its guiding principles among others recommendations.