Over aged Nigerian Players in African Youth Championship Exposed
Cheating starts with lying.
In Nigeria lying is a way of life to make ends meet and to catch up the Joneses.
Couples shamelessly lie to cheat themselves.
Boyfriends lie to their girlfriends and girlfriends lie to their boyfriends in their two can play games of conceit and deceit to cheat themselves.
Politicians, pupils, students, scholars, professors and other professionals lie and cheat to succeed.
The most successful people in Nigeria lied and cheated their way to the top.
Nigerian soccer players are perhaps the worst cheats in the game. They lie about their ages to compete in both CAF and FIFA youth competitions. You see a young Nigerian who is almost 40 years old claiming to be less than 21 years and joining the Flying Eagles and playing in the African Youth Championship, FIFA U-20 World Cup or the FIFA World U-17 World Cup. But a former national soccer team star Adokiye Amiesimaka has been exposing them all. The following is Barrister Amiesimaka’s testimony on the current Flying Eagles team playing in the final of the 2011 African Youth Championship.
“The process for 2011 elections has been highly commended for being very credible. There have been a dramatic turnaround for the better, now we are getting there in politics but we are not getting there in sports. What do I mean? I’m saying that in politics, it used to be very bad, talking about rigging and all that. In football it has been very bad and it is still very bad.
This is 2011, why do we keep deceiving ourselves. Stanley Okoro, for instance, has no business in that team which everybody knows; he cannot be anything less than 33 or 34. Olarenwaju Kayode was also my player in the Sharks feeder team in 2002, he played alongside Fortune Chuwkudi, both of them were mates, he too cannot be less than 29 or 30. Abdul Ajagun was one of the highest goal scorers in the league. He was also in Command Secondary School in Kaduna or so, he dropped out of school in SSS2 in the 1990s and so cannot be U-20.
They have no business in that team, so why are we rejoicing and celebrating. We are not helping ourselves and our football, we are just cheating and ridiculing ourselves and then making nonsense of the whole thing. Even if other countries are cheating, let them cheat because of their ignorance, we know better than them.
Age grade teams are meant to help us develop a serious senior national team but we are not doing that. I passed through the age grade level, I played for my secondary school, played for the Lagos team in the National Sport Festival, I played for the national academicals team, and I played for the University and the senior national team. I went through a process and that is how it should be, that is the truth."
