Strategic partners to the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), GTI Group, says it will not relent on its vision to drive the Nigeria Premier Football League (NPFL) and see it become more attractive and the best in Africa.
Executive Director, GTI Asset Management & Trust Limited, Nelson Ine gave the assurance yesterday while making his digital presentation on the NPFL and the President Federation Cup (PFC); the journey so far, during a media parley with journalists at the group’s Corporate Headquarters in Lagos.
According to Ine, since the involvement of GTI in the running of the NPFL in the past three years, the league is now better managed and beginning to attract more followers.
While acknowledging the abundance of football talents in the country, he stress that with more investors coming into the league to invest in the football clubs, the clubs will grow to become business centres and provide job opportunities to the Nigerian economy.
He emphasised that the development of the NPFL rest in the hands of Nigerians and not on outsiders, hence the need for private sector ownership of the clubs.
“The operation of the league so far is running fine. It shows that the future of our league is bright. But I still believe there is a lot of room to improve.
“All we need to do is grow the clubs to become business centres, driven by effective and efficient administrative management as have in Europe.
“The whole idea is to make our league number one in Africa,” he said.
“The growth of the NPFL is in our hands. We should not expect foreigners to come and grow our league for us, no way. We just have to promote our own league.
One component that will fast track us to where we all desire to be is transition to private ownership and management because we’ve had it like that before and we knew what we got out of it and we expect to have it like that again because that align it with the international best practice all over the world,” he added.
The Group Managing Director (GMD) and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), GTI Group, Abubakar Lawal in his remarks said the GTI group is encouraged by the progress the league has made in the last three years, declaring to do more.
” So, far it’s been very exciting, rough and tough. Yes, very exciting because the focus is very clear. We know exactly where we are going. We know what we want to achieve and luckily we’re being encouraged by the results we are getting. It’s been very interesting and wonderful experience.
“Nigeria has everything that it takes to make our league a world class. We have got everything. We have got the players, even, the good weather, we got the people, we got the passion. So, the market is there; everthing is there, we are putting the piece and pieces together and we are excited because we are getting the results. And just in a matter of months and years to come, it will be unbelievable.We are almost getting there,” he said.
Commenting further on the economic benefit of NPFL, the GTI boss added: “We’re Nigerians, we’re the ones responsible for building our economy and what we’re doing is a components of Gross Domestic Products (GDP). It’s in our hands – no British, no America, no Russia will help us to build Nigeria. We have to roll our sleeves from all the sectors- agriculture, education, health, marine, everything we have to do it ourselves.