Juliana Taiwo
11 November 2009
Abuja — President of the Confederation of African Football (CAF), Issa Hayatou yesterday commissioned the National Technical Centre which is a FIFA Goal Project in Abuja. International governing body FIFA contributed a total sum of $1.9 million to the project.
A breakdown of the financial assistance from FIFA includes $400,000 for the Goal Project One for Nigeria, $550,000 for the Win in Africa with Africa infrastructure otherwise known as football turf ,while the sum of $968,000 also came from FIFA as its financial assistance programme to the federation.
Hayatou who is also a Vice President of FIFA said that the fact that most of the body's major tournaments are holding in Africa is an indication of FIFA President Sepp Blatter tremendous interest in African football.
Speaking in his capacity as an African, Hayatou said just as Ghana won in Egypt, Nigeria can also host and win the U-17 competition. He added that Nigeria is a pride of Africa on the basis of its exploits in football.
Hayatou also revealed that FIFA is waiting anxiously to commission the NFF secretariat in no distance future in the next phase of developmental project .
The Goal Programme, a brainchild of FIFA's President Sepp Blatter was launched in 1999-2002 with CHF 100 million. It then graduated to Goal II stage with CHF 100 million for 2003-2006. For the Goal III stage FIFA made available $120 million for the 2007-2010 period.
The aim of the programme is to help the less privileged federations promote projects including headquarters, natural and artificial turf pitches, training and education centers and other facilities that are essential to basic infrastructure. The programme's first aim was reached at the end of 2006 when each member association had its own "House of Football".
So far, 158 of the 366 projects in the pipeline have been officially inaugurated, with a further 17 currently in the planning stage. Already 173 member associations are working on or have already completed a second, third or even a fourth project.
In his remark, the NFF President, Sani Lulu said Nigeria remains grateful to Blatter for his vision of Goal Project and Win in Africa for Africa. He said besides the goal project phase one, NFF has gone ahead to add complimentary facilities with the support for the Federal Government which include construction of modern kitchen facility, provision of industrial kitchen equipment, water treatment plant, ground and overhead water tanks, hard and soft landscaping and 350 KVA Generating set/Generator House.
Also commenting, the Secretary General of NFF, Bolaji Ojo-Oba said the commissioned center includes a 42 bedroom hostel facilities to be used by any club or any institution that believes in football development.
On maintenance of the facility, Ojo- Oba said "we have just commissioned them and don't forget this center has been here for about two years now and we have been camping our players here. For it to remain in this state it means it has been well managed. So we will keep to that spirit, the traditional Nigerian maintenance culture which people have been complaining about will not affect this project. We will cherish this", he said.
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