Nigeria, recently, returned to reckoning in African football with a strong showing at the Confederation of African Football (CAF) 2023 awards, scooping the top male and female individual prize.
At the event which took place in Marrakech, Morocco, Victor Osimhen was crowned African Footballer of the Year 2023.
His laurel as the continent's best male footballer came 24 years after Nwankwo Kanu's victory as the continent's best soccer star.
Osimhen's victory did not come as a surprise to Nigerians following his exploits for his club, Napoli, and country in the 2022/23 football season. It was, indeed, a sigh of relief for the most populous African nation which had waited over two decades to produce the continent's be soccer star again.
It was a dominant showing for the country at the awards ceremony as the serial winner, Asisat Oshoala, 29, was, again, declared the African Women's Footballer of the Year for the six time running, while the Women's Goalkeeper of the Year diadem went to Chiamaka Nnadozie, 23.
Also, Nigeria's Super Falcons defeated the reigning African champions South Africa and Morocco to win the Women's National Team of the Year.
Oshoala plays for Barcelona, one of the top female clubs in Europe where she has established herself as a top striker and helped the club win domestic and European titles, while Nnadozie plays for Paris FC in France and has a big reputation as top goalkeeper.
Osimhen's victory came as a welcome relief after no Nigerian player won the individual honour for almost a quarter of a century. Even the Napoli striker, born on December 29, 1998, was barely a year old when Nwankwo Kanu last won the award for Nigeria in 1999.
Considering Nigeria's pedigree in African football, the failure to win this accolade for such a longtime was a concern to many stakeholders. While the country continued to dominate women's football awards on the continent, the men's honour eluded its array of football stars.
But before the long wait, Nigerians dominated the African Footballer of the Year in the 90s, making it to the podium five times in the first seven years of the award that was introduced in 1992 by CAF to honour the best player of the continent every football season.
The late Rashidi Yekini was the first Nigerian player to win the CAF top player award. The prolific striker, renowned for his powerful and clinical finishing, won the award in 1993.
The following year, 1994, another Nigerian winger, Emmanuel Amunike, claimed the award for his significant role in Nigeria's success at the 1994 African Cup of Nations. He also was an important part of the Super Eagles team that participated at the 1994 World Cup in the United States, scoring against Bulgaria and Italy.
Kanu Nwankwo was named CAF Men's Player of The Year in 1996 for his significant role in the victory of Ajax in the 1995 UEFA Champions League (UCL). The club also won the Eredivisie, the Dutch domestic league title, that same season and finished as the runners-up in the 1996 UCL.
Kanu also led Nigeria to the gold medal in the men's football event at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, when he captained Nigeria's U23 national team, the Dream Team. The Arsenal legend was to repeat the feat of emerging Africa's best in 1999 and became the first and only Nigerian to win the African Footbar of the Year twice.
Between 1996 and 1999, a member of Super Eagles AFCON winning squad in 1994, Victor Ikpeba, claimed the 1997 edition of the award for his significant impact at AS Monaco winning the 1996/97 Ligue 1 title in France and the 1997 Trophees des Champions. However, after Kanu's second victory in 1999, no Nigerian won the honour until now.
Nigeria's 24 years' wait for the individual accolade of Africa's top male footballer despite boasting several talented footballers could be attributed to a number of reasons.
This newspaper understands that CAF often takes into consideration a player's performance both for club and country in making its choice of Player of the Year and Nigerian players may not have consistently achieved significant success at top European clubs or any major international tournament in the last two decades.
Also, unlike in the 90's when Nigerian players were a force to reckon with across the globe, when Africa is concerned, players of other African countries have come of age and are turning out outstanding performances for their European clubs and countries, making the CAF best player ward more competitive and difficult for Nigerian players.
While it is expected that Victor Osimhen's victory will spur other Nigerian players and even the younger ones to excel and ensure that Nigeria remains at the top, this we believe that it will not come easy unless the necessary structures are put in place to develop our football talents to be able to compete, match and surpass their counterparts in other countries.
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Worthy of note is that the three Nigerian individual award winners at the CAF 2023 awards are local products from where they went on to rub shoulders with the best in the world.
The trio of Osimhen, Oshoala and Nnadozie were in Nigerian youth teams that made good showings at Under-17 and Under-20 world tournaments before graduating to the senior national teams.
Their recent showing is a pointer to the nation's football authorities that they should focus their attention at developing football at the grassroots and catching them young rather than the recent lazy approach of poaching players groomed in foreign jurisdictions.
As a newspaper we congratulate Osimhen, Oshoala, Nnadozie and the Falcons for the honour they have brought to the nation and ask them to keep up the good work.
