Special Report: How Age Fraud Has Immensely Affected The Nigerian Super Eagles

Oh Yes! I am a football fanatic. Just last weekend while watching the beautiful football games played in the English Premier League, a thought crossed my mind during the match between Manchester City and Crystal Palace which was  played on January 16.

Nigerian footballers came to my mind and I ask myself – how long will age cheat kill our football? when are players going to stop lying about their real age – which is an obvious deterrent to personal and nationwide growth.

Just recently a debate surrounding age fraud has resurfaced, following a report by Switzerland-based football observatory team on January 12.

The report, however, traced the usual under performance by many African senior teams to massive cheating carried out at their youth levels.

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According to the report, countries like Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon are yet to reach the full potential in their respective senior teams as a result of wrong foundations set with the youth teams.

In this regards, I decided to take a holistic approach in looking at how age cheating (a common act in African football) has affected the growth of the game in the most populous black nation – Nigeria.

Manchester City youngster Kelechi Iheanacho had just provided the assist to Sergio Aguero for his first goal of the game (the Argentine went ahead to get a brace).

However a question from a colleague rattled my mind – Don’t you think Iheanacho, dubbed to be youngest player in Manchester City strike force could be older than Aguero?

I immediately rose to the defence of the young lad, rubbishing the comment knowing fully well Iheanacho is 19. However after a careful perusal on the growth of our youngsters back home, I said to myself “there may be a little sense in the question he just asked”.  I expect you to ask me why. However, the reason isn’t far-fetched. Let us take a trip down memory lane.

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English coach Harry Redknapp had joked about Nwankwo Kanu’s official age in 2010 back at Portsmouth. According to him, Kanu was 49 at that time but he is still a king.

Obafemi Martins is not 25 but 32. Jay-Jay Okocha is 10 years older than his “official” age throughout his career and Taribo West, whose playing career ended some years ago, is in his late fifties. Nigerians said online with mixed feelings, these cannot be based on fact – who knows, the speculations may be true or false.

However, suspicions about the true age of some Nigerian footballers dated as far back as 20 years when world football governing body FIFA banned Nigeria from all international fixtures for two years after finding that the birth dates of three of their players in the 1988 Olympics were different from the ones used by the same players in previous tournaments.

Despite believes that age fraud in the country was set to be a thing of the past with this punishment from FIFA, it became more prominent. This stirred a move again from FIFA to introduce the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans aimed at checking the ages of players at the 2009 Under-17 World Cup.

Alarmed at this development, Nigeria subsequently dropped 15 players from their squad to the tournament in which they were going to host.

However, a player in the green-white-green colours of the country still went ahead to steal the show at the competition despite a slow start.

He was popularly referred to as “Little Messi”, real name Stanley Okoro. But where is he today? Last I heard of him, he was on loan to Bulgarian side, Cherno More from parent club Almeria.

Two years before, a certain Chrisantus Macauley had just picked up the Golden boot at the 2007 FIFA U-17 World Cup in Korea after finishing top scorer with seven goals, and was given the Adidas Silver Ball.

Today, the manager of AEK and a Chelsea legend Gustavo Poyet where Macauley plies his trade doesn’t have him in his first team plans and the Nigerian forward will probably be released this January.

Although the MRI has done a good job in detecting age fraud in football, the question if the job has been very thorough has been left unanswered.

This draw my attention to a comment made by the captain of Uruguay U-17 side in 2013 FIFA U-17 World Cup, Fabrizio Buschiazzo in a tournament which Nigeria lost several key players to alleged age cheat weeks into the competition.

He said after his team lost 2-0 to Nigeria U-17 who eventually went ahead to win the trophy. “I am very angry to think that Nigeria are not 17. We are an under-17 team and are better than any other under-17s but not against 35 and 40-year-olds which is how the Nigerians appeared to be to me.”

Two years after, apparently stunned by the artistry of defending champions, Golden Eaglets in Chile, former Mexico U-17 coach, Raul Gutierrez accused the Nigerian wonder-kids of doing things that no real U-17 player could do with the ball.

“Beyond their physical development, decisions made by many of players of this Nigeria team are not of an U-17 player,’ the coach told mediotiempo.com.

According to former Nigeria international Jonathan Akpoborie, 45, age fraud is “rampant in African football and it is the biggest problem the game faces over here.”

He told BBC Sport in 2014: “It has been a big problem and still is. Some of them played at the Under-17 level and then a few years later retire because they can’t run any more.

“Look at Spain’s national team as an example of how it should be done. The likes of Xavi and Andres Iniesta came through the youth teams. You can track their career all the way through.

“When you look at the African players playing for the Under-17s, maybe one or two years later they have retired because they can’t produce what they produced at Under-17 level because they are so old. The wrong players are being given the platform.”

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However, the reasons for players pretending to be younger than they are, could be traced to pressure for success, individual ambition and ease in falsifying your age as factors for it.

A blogger said some years back: “A friend of mine who once played in the Nigerian league told me his real age was 34 but his football age was 21.

“You can walk into any immigration office in Nigeria today, forge documents at the nearby business centre, change your name, place of birth, date of birth, pay 7,000-10,000 naira instead of the official price of about 5,500 for an international passport and within hours you have completed the whole process.

“A new passport, a new person – and if you are a footballer, a younger one.”

With all these being said, it’s quite clear that players lying about their ages in world football is a problem the authorities have been struggling to get a hold of for a long time.

Nigeria has by far the worst reputation when it comes to age fraud in football and this has overtime hindered the growth of the game as our darling Super Eagles have continued to struggle at the big stage.

“I know of a player who represented us at the u-17 level but his twin recently clocked 30. Another represented us at the youth level but had wife and children back home,” former super eagles coach, Adegboye Onigbinde told Naij.com sports.

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In the real sense, lying about one’s age may be a common practice that implies a competitive advantage in youth categories. But in the long term, this strategy is counterproductive as it does not provide ideal conditions for the full development of talent. This is one of the reasons for which the real potential of Nigeria squads in recent times remains untapped.

According to Jonathan Akpoborie, the introduction of MRI scanning has been a success but has it been a huge success, maybe not!

He said: “The government in Lagos, Nigeria, has put a new programme in place where every child who attends school is given a number and this number stays with them.

“Without that number you can’t play in the junior leagues. Someone like me, who is an agent, can only take a player who has that number. I just hope the whole federation will adopt that system.

“Age fraud is a complex problem and without everyone uniting together against it, we won’t be able to get rid of it.”

So I said to myself, if the Government can get their acts together by registering daily births in a central database system, we can take it from there and guide against age cheats and frauds from happening in the future generation.

This special report is authored by Nomso Obiajuru, a content editor in Naij.com. He writes for both the sports and political desk.

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