Foreign-Based Players Should Not Be Prioritized Over Local Ones During Consideration For Super Eagles Team – Minister

The Minister of Sports, John Owan Enoh, has said that foreign players should not be prioritised over home-based players when considering who to call up into the national team.

Enoh said it is part of the reforms that the ministry is planning to implement to make the sports industry more attractive.

The minister made the disclosure on Monday during an interview on Arise TV where he spoke on the implementation of the National Sports Industry Policy and the incentives to attract private investors into the sports industry.

Over the weekend, Enoh disclosed that the Bola Tinubu-led administration has adopted the National Sports Industry Policy (NSIP).

The last administration also set up an inter-ministerial committee comprising the Ministries of Sports, Ministry of Finance and the Federal Inland Revenue Service to agree on a series of incentives for private sector players who intend to invest in the industry.

Enoh said, “The inter-ministerial committee has been set up and they completed its work and submitted the document that has to do with a number of series of incentives that the government was supposed to sign on. The only thing it didn’t do was to sign on that document before the exit of that administration.

“So, one of the things that need to be done is to get those sets of incentives that have to do with different categories of investments and a different set of incentives to bolster the private sector indicating for example that if you do X, Y and Z, investments, that you are going to get these number of incentives.”

He said he discussed with President Tinubu last week about the incentives and that he has sent a reminder.

Enoh said after the president approves the incentives, the next step will be to engage private sector investors on the opportunities and benefits of investing in the country’s sports industry.

The minister decried the decay in the industry which has led to the exclusion of Nigerian referees in the recent Confederation of African Football (CAF) list.

He said, “One month along the line as the Minister of Sports Development, I believe that we have already started interrogating the issues that are affecting our football, especially the local league. We started interrogating these issues. I’m sure some of you followed the fallout of Nigeria’s exclusion when CAF invited about 85 referees in different categories and out of which we didn’t have one Nigerian.

“One of the first things we are doing is to restore the credibility of the league. I’m bothered and concerned. I look forward to a period in which people on their own will get interested in watching our own local leagues. We need to restore back the credibility of that league. We need to get refereeing right.

“A lot of these things we need to get done. Marketing is key.”

He said reforms will be done as regards the ownership of clubs by the state government. Enoh said he hopes with the reform, ownership of clubs will gradually evolve from government ownership to private ownership.