A top notch referee only appear at the world cup with the help and assistance of the country's FA, the continent football authority and overall FIFA in training and developmental programs.
In the case of Nigeria absent from the various level of world cup finals, there is need for the NFF referees committee and NRA to help put in place measures that will help Nigeria to hoist its flags at the continental and world levels.
The likes of Amao Opeyemi and Baba Abel by now could have taking over from retired Peter Edibe that represented Nigeria at the last nations cup and only missed out from the world cup party due to the number of assistant referee slot for Africa .
Though Opeyemi was at the last All African game before his badge was retrieved by the NFF referees committee , I "wondered" why they didn’t allow him to continue with his development , because most of his fellow referees from other countries for the same game were at the last CHAN nations cup, if Opeyemi had made the nations cup there could have been hope of the country aiming for the 2022 world cup because that would have put him on the FIFA list .
If Abel Baba's steady progress is followed as it is now, am sure we could see him in the 2019 nations cup.
Surprisingly I seem not to understand why the training and development of UDOH ANIETE Ferdinand is on hold, what I mean by training and development is that, this season in Nigeria I can list out the number of games handed out to him for officiating in the league and federation cup, this is someone that was in the last U17 Africa nations cup, with this I would have expected the authority saddled with the training and development of referees to take maximum advantage of his steady growth in CAF listing and project the young referees.
The same has to be said for Azeez Orowole , Ago Abubakar, their training and development need to be stepped up if we are to even think of flying our flag at the highest level of Africa football tournament and probably at the world cup too, I know presently we have them officiating in the preliminary stages of all CAF and FIFA qualifying games, however, this is not enough for them to project themselves and make a steady progress to the centre stage .
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