The Minister of Sports and Youth Development, Sunday Dare, says the ministry is working in collaboration with the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) to re-engineer and rebuild the country`s football league.
He said this during the14th edition of the President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB)’s Administration Scorecard Series (2015-2023) on Tuesday in Abuja.
“The negative impact of the dearth of our domestic league and clubs is what we see in the weakness of our Super Eagles and other national teams.
“In the past we pick our national team players from our domestic league, Okala from Rangers, Odegbami from ICC Shooting Stars among others,“he said.
“Now we are picking from Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool, we must return to our domestic league and rebuild our league and bring our boys.
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“That process is ongoing through the Interim Management Committee (IMC) it may seem to be slow but we have taken that strong decision to rebuild the domestic league,“he said.
Dare said that there was a dire need to rebuild the domestic league to bring in talented Nigerians that are committed to show case their talents.
The minister said that Nigerians playing in the foreign leagues are also Nigerians, but that we need to build a strong domestic league.
He said that the recently constituted 13-man Interim Management Committee (IMC) is saddled with the running and rebranding the Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL)
The IMC is saddled with the responsibility of the management of the NPFL and to work on legal framework and commercialisation of the League.