English Premiership Craze

English Premiership Craze: Underdeveloping the Underdeveloped

Ademowo Adeyemi Johnson

The English premiership has been very popular among football fans in Africa since the seventies. First as a source of betting through the Pool Agencies and later because of the inroads made by notable African footballers, like Salako, Owubokiri, etc who plied the round leather trade in the Queen’s country. Viewed via these means, one can conclude that the interest then was basically that of money making both for the poor and average Africans who forecast and stake money, and then withdraw to pray for DRAWS in order to win some money, and high foreign exchange earning for Africans who don the colours of English teams in various divisions.

That was the case in the late seventies and early eighties. Then, the local leagues across Africa have much followership and various African countries were trying hard due to the pressure from spectators, and huge local league followership, to develop the local league. For example, the Nigeria Football league at that time had die-hard fans clubs scattered all over Nigeria and even the West African region. Clubs like IICC, the Stationary Stores, Abiola Babes, Obanta United, Shooting Stars, and a host of others were teams to beat in any match. The support and pupolarity within the West-African sub-region was so much that citizens of countries such as Ghana, Togo, Benin and others dreamt of being good enough to wear the colours of certain Nigerian clubs. That era has since gone! Our leagues, African local leagues, I mean which were underdeveloped, but moving fast towards appreciable development in the early eighties and even to some extent, early nineties are now wallowing in crass undervelopment with no hope in sight of positive advancement in the nearest future. The stadia are now empty and the once legendary clubs have since gone into oblivion, most especially in Nigeria.

Today, everyone including my neighbour’s five-years-old son, David, is simply crazy for the English premiership and to some extent the Spanish La Liga and Italia Serie A. However, the one enjoying the craziest of followerships is the English premiership. From Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Morocco, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Seychelles to the ‘tiny’ islands, Cape Verde and Sao Tome and Principle, Africans are simply madly in love with the premiership! No thanks to the illustrious Africans such as Abedi Pele, George Weah, Kanu Nwankwo, Didier Drogba, among others who brought Europeans leagues into annoying and very disturbing prominence in Africa. The attention of everyone including the football administrators have now been shifted to Europe. While the ordinary Africans were doing it out of cheer interest, the rich administrators are involved as agents, to the players seeking teams in Europe and because of their investment in the commonplace cable (pay) television stations showing the games.

The madness has risen to the highest of imaginable proportions; maybe there will be room for the highest of highest of craze in years to come. Today we read stories of street fights between fans of opposition clubs; persons dying of heart attack after betting heavily on ‘his’ favourite club; stabbings in the head and arm all in the name of blind support for one English team or the other; among others. In fact, the worst of revelations are the cases of governors of states in Nigeria where sports are grossly underdeveloped jetting out to European countries to witness LIVE matches involving their clubs.

The local leagues are dying despite huge sponsorship deals and incentives being offered by companies to boost interest in local leagues. The sponsorship deals rather than foster and engender development have been creating and promoting stagnancy and regression indices. The administrators now fight one another as individuals and in groups to have a fair share of the sponsorship cakes at the peril of local league development. A very recent example is the case of the ulterior motive fight between the Chairman of the Nigeria Football League, Obaseki, and Chairman of the Nigeria Football Association, Lulu. Our homes are being invaded at weekends and mid-weekly by live broadcast of English premiership matches because attempts at showing live local matches have to be stopped due to disgraceful state of our stadia, glaring partisanship of the officials and show of dearth of discipline among players and officials. A very good example here was when one the Nigeria Football Association Vice-Chairman, Mr. Dominic Iofa of Lobi Stars, led his team out of the field in protest instead of taking up the issue with the match commissioner.

Today, due to the sorry and eyesore state of local league caused by embarrassing and demeaning role of our sports administrators, David, my neighbour’s five-year-old son will rather miss his food and postpone his assignments than miss any game involving Arsenal F.C, and to a great extent A.C. Milan. Yet, he does not know of any club in the Nigerian league. And he could without difficulties name 70% of Arsenal and A.C. Milan players. The passion for the English soccer is so much that he would do anything to watch a match involving his teams. The other day he entered my apartment but met me watching CNN. After waiting for about ten minutes hoping that I will understand his mission to no avail since it has become a sort of ‘Saturday, Saturday tonic’, he simply asked me a simple but very loaded question: “Is it because it is Arsenal that is playing not Chelsea that you are watching news?” I was ashamed to reply him. I simply changed it to the sports station showing the Arsenal match. I need not reply anyway because he is ever ready to leave in case I did not change the channel. Of course, he must surely find a way of watching the match.

To imagine that the craze has infested a five-year-old boy to this extent is pathetic. If the likes of David can dream and discuss no other issue but the English Premiership, I wonder what the future holds for the continent. Of course am guilty as well. As obvious from David’s allegation above, I am a Chelsea fan (did I hear anyone say ‘Chelsea for life!’?). But my likes who grew up loving certain African clus still share the passion among the teams to date (for instance, Ocean Boys F.C. has been my club for past two seasons but am now with Enyimba because of their new coach, my man of all seasons, Daniel Amokachie!). This has made me to interested in what becomes of the local league. But with the current level of followership of English Premiership among African youths, and even adults, one cannot but be worried about the future of the African local leagues, and to a great extent, African football.

Our situation is worsen by the fact that local leagues before the current invasion has been underdeveloped. With the tempo and level of the current craze, what is to be expected in the coming years is obvious: The underdevelopment of the underdeveloped. Surely we do not desire this but are we willing to alter the status quo? I don’t think so not with the caliber of persons at the helms of local league management in most African contries. The current madness is therefore sure to continue for years to come but there are solutions if we could appreciate the gravity of the problem.

Ademowo Yemi Johnson, Bio-Medical Ethicist and Socio-Political Philosopher, is a former Secretary General, International Humanist and Ethical Youth Organisation, Belgium and Research Fellow, Center for Applied Ethics, Humanism and Development, Ibadan.