The death of Dr Issa Hayatou, the longest serving president of the Confederation of African Football recently at the age of 77, marks the end of a golden era in African football. Hayatou served as CAF president between 1988 and 2017 and even though he left office seven years ago, he remained an inspiration for all those who are desirous of seeing African football attain more glorious heights. Under Hayatou, football in Africa experienced an exponential limp both in intra and international competitions. Unfortunately, the last seven years seem to have witnessed a reversal of the gains the continent garnered in the management and prosecution of its football in the nearly three decades of Hayatou.
It was under Hayatou that the African Cup of Nations finals was expanded to include more national teams – from eight to 16. Similarly, competitions at the club level also grew both in numbers and scale, allowing more clubs to participate in the African Cup of Champions Club, the CAF Confederation Cup, the CAF Cup and the CAF Super Cup. Within this period also, African football expanded in scope to include youth and women’s competition. But, of course, the hallmark of Hayatou’s CAF presidency was that under him, the continent began to make appearances at the FIFA World Cup finals. Not only did Nigeria, Senegal and Cameroon get to the world cup finals, but also Hayatou succeeded in getting African places at the finals increased from two to six.
The climax was the hosting of the FIFA tournament by South Africa in 2010, the first and only time by an African nation. Perhaps, Hayatou’s most visionary ambience for African football was to create more incentives for footballers within the continent; the final objective being to reduce the flow of African players to other continents, especially Europe. Hayatou, in fact, stirred a big controversy when he described the situation with the metaphor of rich countries importing “raw materials” – talents – from Africa and often sending their less valuable technicians. Here, he was apparently alluding to the situation whereby the best of African talents – in football – get signed on by clubs in other continents, especially Europe, in exchange for poorly rated foreign coaches or so-called technical advisers.
This initiative was highly applauded by both writers and politicians on the continent. Regardless of the fact that it did not enjoy the level of support it deserved from African governments and club owners, Hayatou succeeded in getting the Union of European Football Association to pay fees to African governing bodies and clubs for African-born players working in Europe. This was followed by the Meridien Project, initiated in 1997, creating the UEFA-CAF Meridien Cup which provided for the payment of fees to African National Associations every two years. Two years later, CAF and FIFA went into an agreement, the 1999 Goal Project, which gave 46 African Football Associations financial support of $1 million over four years.
Apart from impacting directly on the development of African football, these collaborations created a cordial relationship between Hayatou and UEFA leaders to the extent that the latter backed him to the hilt when he aspired to take over from Sepp Blatter in 2002. Even though he lost to Blatter with the backing of the American and Asian confederations, Hayatou eventually became the acting president of FIFA in 2015 following the corruption case that led to the removal of Blatter. He held that position until February 2016 when the current president, Gianni Infantino, was elected.
I had the privilege of working closely with Hayatou when, as Imo State governor, I led the preparations for the participation of the Heartland Football Club of Owerri in the 2008/2009 CAF Champion League. It was the 45th edition of Africa’s Premier Football Club tournament organised by CAF.
Immediately after the official launch of our flagship programme, the Clean and Green Initiative in August 2007, and as part of the New Face of Imo Vision, I authorised the recruitment of a foreign technical adviser for Heartland by the name Mitko Dobrev, also as part of our Greening Sports Project. I recall with nostalgia that we also engaged the services of three of Nigeria’s best international soccer stars: Christian Chukwu, Samson Siasia and Ben Iroha. We rebranded Heartland and targeted the African Cup. In 2008, however, it finished second in the Premier League by one point against Kano Pillars and that earned it an automatic place for the African championship slot.
Heartland crushed so many African clubs with a rich history until it got to the finals. The first leg of the finals with TP Mazembe of the Democratic Republic of Congo was played at the Dan Anyiam stadium, Owerri. It ended 2-1 in favour of Heartland. The second leg was on November 7, 2009, at the Frederic Kibassa Maliba Stadium in Lubumbashi which unfortunately ended 1-0 in favour of the Congolese under very controversial circumstances.
But TP Mazembe was awarded the trophy on technical grounds based on the Away Goal rule; with Heartland getting the Silver medal, that is, second place. In addition, Heartland’s striker, Uche Agba, whom I gave a lot of personal attention during the preparations, earned the second highest goal scorer of the tournament with seven goals after TP Mazembe’s Kaluyituka who scored eight goals.
In appreciation of and support for our efforts, the then President, the late Umaru Yar’Adua, provided the club with his presidential jet for our trip to Lubumbashi for the match. But it was a very rough encounter. In spite of the fact that TP Mazembe won, the Congolese were very hostile to us but we were saved from anything sinister through the intervention of CAF officials led by Hayatou. Before that glorious outing in 2008/2009, Heartland only got to the quarter finals of the African championship when it was known as Iwuanyanwu Nationale, losing to Esperance of Tunis in the first leg in 1994. It would be recalled that it was on that trip that the team, Iwuanyanwu Nationale, suffered an air crash tragedy at Tamanrasset, Algeria, losing two of its players, Aimola Omale and goalkeeper, Uche Ikeogu.
The proprietor of Iwuanyanwu Nationale, Chief Iwuanyanwu, who departed on 25 July 2024, had during his lifetime severally acknowledged the big support his club received from Hayatou. Even though the two had ceased playing active roles in African football, it is a matter of regret that these two pillars of African soccer had to pass on at a time when the continent would have still wished to draw inspiration from their wealth of experience. Truth be told, this is not the best time for African sports. Nigeria, the giant of Africa, has just returned from the 2024 Paris Olympic without a single medal.
Even though nine African countries won gold medals, it couldn’t be said to be a very good outing for the continent. In the men’s football category, only four African countries were at the Olympics but none got even a bronze medal. In the 1996 Olympics, Nigeria got the gold for men’s football but the performance of Africa since then in that category has been nothing but abysmal. I am of the strong belief that if African nations had rallied around Hayatou when he canvassed for those initiatives that were earlier mentioned in this article, the situation would have been most properly different.
Back to Nigeria, however, we should go back to the vision of the likes of Hayatou. Nigeria is arguably a “football nation” but her performance has not matched her size. At the 2023 African Cup of Nations, Nigeria again lost a big opportunity to rule African soccer, losing to a less-rated host country, Cote d’Ivoire by a 2-1 goal margin on February 11, 2024. It was a match Nigeria had everything going for it to win.
Today, Nigeria ranks in the third position in African football, after Morrocco and Senegal in that order. These are two countries that are quite small and populated by much less talented professionals. Although Nigeria jumped four places from the 42nd position to the 28th position after that tournament, all hands must be on deck to ensure that there are no further slides down.
The back and forth surrounding the search for a new coach for the national team, the Super Eagles, should have been avoided because it makes Nigeria’s football vulnerable. As things stand, it is clear that the choice of a fellow to replace Jose Peseiro, who left after the 2023 African Cup of Nations, has been plagued by politics, intrigues and power play. I think something more serious should be on the table.
To be sure, there is the need to pay great attention to our economic and political challenges but it should not be at the expense of sports development. The perennial lacklustre attitude to preparations for our participation in international sports competitions must cease. The reason why the developed countries pay so much attention to sports and spend heavily on them is that they realise that economic and political prowess alone is not enough to earn them honour and prestige in the international arena.
Some might argue that these developed countries invest handsomely in sports because they have the resources. My response to that is twofold; one, it is not the financial resources that matter in the first place. It is realising and accepting the importance sports play both at home and in the optics within the comity of nations. If we develop the right attitude, the financial resources would not be the problem. In other words – and this is the second point – we are not even making judicious use of the little we can afford to channel towards sports development.
In my days in Imo, we did not wait to amass billions before putting on our thinking caps for sports development. Rebranding sports and using it to attract both national and international attention as well as engage our youths was part of our GREEN vision. And once that determination was there, we discovered that what was needed was a little bit of pragmatism. For example, we decided to focus more on sports like football, athletics, boxing and hockey, areas we felt we had a comparative advantage. And it paid off both at home and in our international engagements.
At the National Sports in Kaduna in 2008, Imo State came first. At the African Hockey Championship in 2009, we also came first. We were the leading state in both female and male handball. The climax of our success was our outing at the 2008 African Championship football tournament in which we came second as earlier narrated. As a matter of fact, it was during the preparations for that tournament that I got close to Hayatou and we both found ourselves in a cordial personal relationship.
The point, therefore, is that we must sit up as a nation in the area of sports. There is no intention here to indulge in a blame game but I make bold to state that left for the average Nigerian, we should jettison most of the things we are doing and pay attention to sports. A young youth was once asked what he thought was Nigeria’s biggest problem and his response was quite interesting. To paraphrase the youngster, if Nigeria gets it right with football, every other thing will fall into place! That might have been an exaggeration but it is, nonetheless, significant. Another version of this passion is the oft-repeated saying that the only time Nigerians forget their differences is when watching a Nigerian team playing another country’s team in a football match. We can go on and on in demonstration of the fact that sports, generally, is a measure of both strength – locally and internationally – on one hand; and love and national unity on the other.
- Ohakim is a former governor of Imo State
