Nigeria League Starts In October… Shehu Dikko

By Olayinka Elebute

League Management Company Chairman, Mallam Shehu Dikko   has categoriecally declared that the 2021/2022  Nigeria football season will end by May in 2022, he said these when he played host to Sports Writers Association of Nigeria (SWAN) Abuja Chapter in his office in Abuja.

According to him, “We have mandate from CAF to align our league with their  calendar,  reason we have to do all that we did in  August to finish our league  and now  we have to start early  that is certain  2021/2022 we have to finish by May regardless of what happened we just have to start the the new season early and our clubs are ready for these challenges,  we have to come to a conclusion and call our clubs to a meeting on when we will finish our season,  the CAF competition starts in September whatever we are doing we have to start by September or early October,  we have to agree on the date to start we just finished our season in August 8 the players are not machine we have to give them a month rest and now the continental teams are already in camp now”

 Speaking further, the NPFL Supremo said “ideally the CAF competition starts on the 10th of September so whatever we are doing we have to start as quickly as we can, so when the CAF  competition starts officially and our clubs are readjusting to the new CAF schedule and some of them are into preseason now, we have to target end of September or the 1st week in October, we must meet our club owners and we need to have a clearer date that’s why you can see that most of the clubs are already back in camp and hopefully once we cross these hurdles we will be back to the normal league scheduled for CAF competition”.

By then everyone will know its August to May that is when our season are been run, so we will not have to rush our teams like the final week of last season that our teams played 10 games in the last weeks of the league and everyone will know we have a stable calendar for our league, he said.

On his part the league calendar is also one of the reason our league players are always missing when the Super Eagles list are been made, “one of the reason why we are not having our players in the Current Super Eagle team list is simply because  we don’t have a regular season, most of the players are on holidays we will not be able to bring them to the team they are currently on break some of them would have been able to be part of the team if the league is on at least some NPFL players would have made the team” he concluded.