Lagos Liga: We Need Our Own Platforms
During the week, a Nigerian footballer posted a message on X to the handle of Sevilla, one of the teams playing in the Spanish top division, La Liga. He asked the handle how many retweets he needed to get a trial with the club. The club, most likely thinking it was asking a near impossible thing of the player, said 100 thousand retweets was the number. Osineye Ola Great took up the challenge and by the next day had secured the 100k retweets, rallying Nigerians with the help of Nigerian Beach Eagles legend, Abu Azeez.
Sevilla, on their part, have not been moving correctly since the young Nigerian footballer hit the mark. They shared a link to a new Sevilla team to be assembled to play in the 9th tier of Spanish football. They were asked a question, they handed down a challenge that has since been surpassed. The ball is now back in their court. From there to the player who must still prove his mettle. But now, it’s Sevilla’s move and there is only one call. Sadly though, the Sevilla handle has since gone quiet on the matter.
Last month, I watched Ola Great play for Superstar FC in the inaugural Lagos Liga. This was a well-organised tournament that helped to elevate football at the recreational/amateur level to heights never seen this side of the world. Everything was top-notch and excellently done. The games were streamed live to TV and YouTube, hence accessible the world over. The teams were dressed in outstanding jerseys by a local maker, Metamo, with their names and numbers on their back. The standard of the football was quite impressive, and the final was not short of glorious. It was football at its finest, with Primal Sporting of Abuja carting home the trophy and the N50m cash prize after defeating the highly rated Applebee. Lagos Liga excited Nigerians online and offline and helped to centre talents like David Onuche, Hassan Abba, Skarra Tomisin Alasiri, Hakeem Scorepion Onitolo, Aliyu Tafida, Sunday Stephen, Sir Jarus, and Dominant Force’s Ola.
If anything, Lagos Liga showed that Nigeria needed more platforms like it to help centre our talents and to give our people local products — players, league, clubs etc — to cheer. From my findings, depending on the class of luxury, it cost just about as much as one or two luxury wristwatches to put together. That is too cheap a thing for us not to have a like football tournament replicated across the country.
The excellence we see every week in the English Premier League, the glorious expectation of exemplary football entertainment served with pomp and pageantry was not always the case. We take it for granted today but the English game was messy, embarrassing, dangerous and poor as recently as the 80s and even into the 1990s. This was part of what necessitated the formation of the Premier League in 1992. It was years in the making. We now take 15 minutes break at half-time like gospel but it was inspired by David Dein, so the league could accommodate more advertising. This greatness we love to cheer was built by people, flesh and blood like us. The impact of that commitment on the UK economy is unprecedented. There is hardly any part of UK social and economic life that hasn’t been impacted.
A group of people looked at the European Champions Cup and then decided they wanted better. The competition evolved into the Champions League. These days, when European clubs go to battle on the pitch, the rest of the world sits or stands to watch. Like the Premier League, it did not happen by accident, it took people being intentional, commitment on the part of people and government and ultimately, they have built the biggest economic system in club football. Presidents, Governors, CEOs and the likes swear their allegiance, privately or publicly, to clubs in Europe. It does not matter whether in their country, football is nothing to be written home about.
Whilst building this football empire, the UK took out time to protect itself from the success of its own creation. Whilst you can watch the Premier League in virtually every capital city around the world on a given Saturday, it is hardly accessible in the UK. That is so lower league, and amateur matches are protected from the popularity of the big teams and games.
In less than 2 weeks, the 67th Annual Grammy Awards will go live in the United States. Like the big football games, many around the world, including from Nigeria, will be tuned in. We will be waiting to hail the winners, whilst the usual suspects will be waiting on the wings to boo those who do not win, not minding the fact that being nominated suggests a level of artistic success.
Whether the Grammies, BET, EMA, UCL, EPL and the likes, we must always remember that these platforms were built by people like us, initially for their own people. The successes of these platforms turned them into global products.
What are we building today that the world could be paying attention to next decade or beyond? Are we resigned to just feeding off platforms created by others? The same way we import their excellence in products, we obsess over same in platforms. How are we not able to understand that our collective poverty derives from the fact that we have not done well enough when it comes to creating products, services or platforms the world is willing to obsess over?
Sevilla may yet do the right thing; grant Ola Great the platform to try out with their team. His talent and self-belief to even make the call to ask deserves it. He also earned it by achieving what was asked of him. One day, a Spanish talent will tweet at a Nigerian club side, hoping to get a chance to play in the Nigerian league. Whether this is possible or not is very much in our hands.
