Former NFF President Sani lulu Abadullahi has envisaged lack of proper age documentation as the major problems of grassroot football development. The former FCT Director of Sports spoke in Gwagwalada Abuja at the weekend where he watched his pet team FOSLA Academy forced to a 1-1 draw by the Gwagwalada Youth Academy. He said the problem with youth football development in the country has been lack of proper documentation of the players which leads to falsification of ages: “What I saw while in office is that there are no control and documentation of players in various academies in the country. What we have done at FOSLA Academy is to collect the background information of the players through their birth certificates, and information retrieved from their parents and their various primary schools. I believe before they finished their secondary schools and getting to the tertiary level these boys would have attained the international standard. The greatest challenge we would have is to have the support of the various authorities that are to manage and supervise the boys at this level”.
Lulu said that he was motivated into the project because he wants to give back to the society what the society gave to him: “I am a citizen of Nigeria and the society has been good to me, and I have realized that. I feel this is the time for me to pay back, and that is exactly what I am doing. It is borne out of the experiences which I have acquired all over the world, and I think the best I have to do is to go back to the grassroots which is exactly what I am doing. I have seen that it is very problematic in nurturing these youths, but I want to continue to give my best to get them to world standard.”