Nkechi Obi is the Chairman of the Nigeria Women Football League and a Sports Development and Management Consultant with over 30 Years experience and accomplishment in sports management, marketing and administration. She also holds the position of the Chief Executive Officer of Sport Nigeria LTD/GTE, a private sector intervention agency set up to aggregate investment into sports facilities and infrastructure and facilitate the development of the sports industry value chain. 

Her experience spans a variety of projects especially with start-up operations in Marketing and Communication, Exhibition Design and Promotion, Event Design and Management, Media Content Development and Broadcast (Politics, Music and Sports), Political Media Campaign Management as well as Products Merchandising and Marketing.

Nkechi has been primarily involved in the design and management of sports projects targeted at engaging the private sector as a pre-eminent partner in sports development in Nigeria, and has initiated several projects to deliver on this objective, chief of which was the Team Nigeria project (2003-2007) – designed to harness private and public sector funding for the training and participation of Nigeria’s athletes at international multi-sport events such as the Olympics, Commonwealth Games and All Africa Games and a host of other events.

Over the past 30 years, she has also promoted capacity development in sports administration as a key component of sports development and has acted as Consultant on development of be-spoke content and projects to government agencies such as the Federal Ministry of Sports / National Sports Commission), The Nigeria Police Force, The Nigerian Army, Kwara State Football Academy, The Nigerian Nationwide League One (the bedrock of grassroots football in Nigeria), as well as a host of blue-chip companies.

Nkechi sees the role of the private sector as the chief driver of the development of sports as an industry and in January 2018 she took up an appointment as the first Chairperson of the Sports Industry Thematic Group of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG), where together with a team of professionals in various economic sectors strategies were put together to midwife the process of developing a new National Sports Industry Policy and harnessing a minimum of US$5 Billion in Investment over a 10-year duration (2020-2030) that will reposition the sports industry as an economic sector. 

Describing herself as a life-long learner, the Abia State born, Anambra State origin NFF Executive Board Member recently spoke exclusively to Exclusivenews on her dreams and visions for the Nigeria Women Football League. Excerpts :

Tell us how you are settling down as the chairman of NWFL.

We’ve been settling down pretty okay. It's quite hectic in the sense that when you get to a place, and you virtually don't meet much, it's almost as if you are starting from scratch, so to speak. Then you have to settle down very quickly. We've been playing the NWFL for 32 years, but it's almost as if, every year you have to start all over again. What we are trying to do this time is to get a very solid foundation, so that even if we're not there tomorrow, whoever comes should be able to find something they can build upon. 

Our focus in settling down has been more on restructuring and repositioning women's football so that it's not just about playing the 90 minutes of football on the field. Women's football is beyond 90 minutes football that is played. The focus all these years has been on just playing those matches and not looking beyond what happens on the field of play. We figured it out a in different way by focusing first on the Women's League to be the trigger for all Women's Football Development particularly professional women's football development, such that young girls can look at it as a career path and start charting a course for their lives through football. So that's what we are focused on in our settling down and it’s coming along quite nicely. 

From your findings, what are those basic problems affecting the league? 

Well, the basic problem people tend to think affecting the league is money. I have a different view. Money is important; without money you can’t do much, but what has essentially been affecting the league is the structure; the structure of the league and how to ensure that we get the best value out of it. That's number one. Secondly, what exactly does the NWFL stand for? And how can it plot a growth trajectory that remains constant regardless of whoever comes. So those are the two basic problems.

That’s the basic problem; the structure of the league and how it can grow. When you get the structure and the strategy right, that's when people will be able to give you the money that you need. And sometimes when you narrow the scope of what you're doing, like the scope of League was narrowed to let's play the matches, which is fine, but the matches are not on TV. How are you going to get the money that you want? When you don’t have the requisite followership how are you going to get the money that you want? We therefore chose to confront the biggest problem which was structure, and what the league should be doing so that the league can get money, get funding from stakeholders. So that was it; our league structure and growth trajectory were the two biggest problems we identified, and we are taking immediate steps to get them sorted out. 

So What Steps Are you taking to sort these problems out? 

The steps we took have to do with the development of what we call Women Football Rising Platform which now captures everything with women football development including capacity development. How do we ensure that we get more women coaches? How do we ensure that we get more women referees in the game? How do we ensure that our players understand that this is a short career, and they should prepare for life after football. Sport is the one sector that allows you to have two careers in your lifetime. So how do we ensure that our players begin the process of getting ready for a second career while they still are able to have the first one. That’s why we created the Player Development Pathway in addition to the Coaches Development and Referees Development Pathways.  Even for the media, how do we ensure that both internally that clubs media and externally that is media outside of the club can cover the league appropriately and ensure that we achieve our objectives. All these Pathways form our capacity development program Class2Pitch, which we are collaborating with the Sports Business Institute and which will begin to unfold from February 2024. 

We also had to address the issue of funding, especially as it concerned the fact that so many people want to give us money individually; different people from all over, what we call retail funds. The issue became  how do we ensure that that is harnessed in a proper manner? We set up what we call the Sisterhood and He4She Campaigns; the Sisterhood being a group of eight women coming together to leverage their own networks and raise funds for our programs. They've chosen to raise money for the capacity development programs. The He4She is the male equivalent but this time ten men coming together to raise retail funds for the NWFL. They chose to raise funds for our Football and the Girl Child programme which is our community engagement platform. We live in communities and our clubs are in communities. So how do we engage with our communities and persuade them to let their girl children play football, show them that playing football is a positive trajectory and career path.

Those are some of the steps we have taken under our Women Football Rising strategy which covers all of these including ensuring that the clubs develop capacity to manage themselves. Professionally, they should actually become professional revenue generating entities. What is happening right now in the world of football after the ruling by the European Court of Justice should catch our attention and make us think.  I understand many of us in Nigeria are talking about it from the point of view of Europe, but that is a ruling that affects the entire global football system so we should not ignore it in this country seeing as it has more or less unshackled football. Don't be surprised in a few years’ time you begin to see private leagues everywhere. How's that going to affect us? We need to look at our house too and try to figure out where that leaves us in a few years’ time. This was something that wasn't part of our strategy, we're now going to have to sit down look at it. It may not affect us this season, it may not affect us next season but it will surely affect us down the road. We shouldn't wait for it to make us irrelevant. 

These and many more are some of the steps we're taking to ensure the NWFL remains relevant to women football and then reaching out to people with these strategies that are not necessarily solely football based but designed so that people who would put money and want to partner with us in some of this programs can do so to achieve their own objectives. That's what we are doing.

Thank you very much. Madam, you are really putting your expertise as a marketing guru to play. How  have you been able to convince the corporate world in these things you are doing? Because we know 
that your background is purely marketing, getting to your people in the corporate world. How difficult has it been ?

Okay, first and foremost my background is not purely marketing. My background is marketing but based on Institutional and Developmental Change Management. What I've done in the past 12-15 years has been Change Management; restructuring sports from purely participation to business. So, in a lot of places I'll be considered a Change  and Development Management expert. It is because of that and not 
necessarily my background in marketing that I'm able to do some of the things that I'm doing now. It Is 
also because of that, I'm able to see clearly that the league is not really fit for purpose as presently constituted. The way it is now, it would be difficult to get more than CSR money, and we wouldn’t really get much. It is not therefore a surprise that there is not much money coming in because there really was no product to sell. The first feedback got from companies was that we didn't have a product that they could key into. So, the first step has been for us to develop a product that we could sell across various mediums, which is the reason why I was insistent on showing the season opener of NWFL on TV, with 
a view to showcasing our league to those who spend advertising money that we have a product that if we put it on TV It will be fine . Arising from this, one of our focus areas going into the second half of the season, is to put more of our matches on TV. We're working on that and making it available to those who have advertising budgets to be able to put some of those advertising money on our live broadcasts and support our broadcasts through adverts. 

Secondly, we now need to package the league properly. Proper branding. I said to the clubs, you all need to be better branded, so that companies can come in to support you, particularly companies in your community. It is not everybody that should go and be looking for Coca-Cola and Nestle and FMCGs like that. Those kind of companies have a higher threshold and deliverables you have to meet to get funding from them. In your community there are one or two local companies and for most football clubs it is their local  community companies that support them. I don’t see any reason why those in oil producing areas cannot get an oil company to brand their front shirt for them. Clubs need to begin to get a bit more creative while and at the same time ensuring that their stadiums on match days are branded properly. This has been communicated to them but they said they didn't have money this season to implement this strategy, so hopefully next season that can be implemented. It is important to stress here that without having a product, nobody is going to buy from you. You can’t go into the market and buy something out of sentiment. No, you buy what will  be of value to you, and that’s what Corporate Nigeria wants us to do, deliver a product that has value. We are still in the process of developing our product. We are managing, we will get some money this year but I pray that we will get what we have worked for eventually. 

How comfortable will the Corporate World be partnering with government clubs? I still believe that the fear of many of them is the government presence in clubs. Do you share that view? 

Not necessarily, and I'll give you an example. Many people who do things with government do it 
from a CSR perspective. Therefore, if there is CSR money available why don’t you work towards getting it? I'll give you another example. I see no reason why clubs in the oil producing states cannot approach oil companies and say, “can you put your name in front of our shirt?’ It won’t cost them that much and they would put the expenditure under CSR or community engagement for them. It falls under their community and development platform and so they will do it. They will put their name and they will give you the money. If you do not do it properly this year, next time, you can't go back to them. 

I have done one or two things with oil companies in years past that’s why I know it is possible, but It is not my responsibility to go out and sell an oil company or any other company to clubs in that area. They should do that themselves. Therefore, while we are looking at corporate sponsors that can put money 
behind ensuring that we can play the matches, I expect clubs themselves particularly the government 
clubs to look to their communities for support. They are all going to have to look beyond subvention and budget heads where every month they are assured of funding because it is in the budget. Otherwise, as I said, with the unshackling of the global football space, anybody who does not arrange themselves properly, will find themselves obsolete in the near future. And that's probably when we would 
begin to see private sector enter this area and make us understand that it was not that they didn't want to enter football. The conditions have to be good, and clubs need to understand that financial independence is what will make them attractive to private sector investment and sponsorship.  I believe if you start off first and foremost collecting CSR money even if it Is 5 million three Million, two million and you use it well, you will be able to collect more from the same person you thought wouldn’t give you. It is not about government or no government, it is about how well you can package yourself so that somebody, anybody, will give you money. 

Are you looking at the capacity of those who are heading the clubs? Do they have the capacity to 
package? 

That's why we have Clubs Development Pathway. I'm also not going to employ people for the clubs. 
Maybe by the time one person does it , two people do it, other clubs will do it. If the person that is 
heading your club is not able to do it then you the club owner will go and find a person that will run your club effectively. Nobody can force anyone to do anything, we can only lead by example. Therefore, the first person to do it successfully will set an example for others to follow. I still remember in this country a few years back I spoke to the NPFL clubs that time and told them, you people when you get a new player, you should showcase the player just like clubs abroad do, as they are buying players we are knowing who they are and everything. And I still remember, the answer I was given was that opponents will take the picture of their new player and take it to babalawo to do juju on top of the player to tie him down, so he won’t be good again. A few years later, Vandrezzer FC started and started putting everything about themselves and their players on social media and ran a robust campaign. Everything changed. When they did the ranking of the top 100 clubs in Africa by digital footprint, Vandrezzer was number one in Nigeria, and was at number 35 in Africa. Nobody told the clubs who were afraid of juju to start running a strong social media campaign and to start doing digital things. Today clubs are putting all their players pictures and other news and highlights out on social media. I asked myself  whether it is that the juju man does not exist again to destroy the players’ talent?
  So that is the thing, it just needs one person. If Vandrezzer had not come at that time, ignored the prevailing practice and viewpoint and started running their club the way clubs run media in other countries by putting everything out there and showing up when they did the ranking, we would still have our clubs hiding things. So, if you wouldn't do it, don't worry. You’ll be left behind. Let’s start off with who is ready to  do run their clubs the way clubs in 21st Century are run. By the time you get one or two showing proof of concept, If your manager is not up to task nobody will tell you to go and sack that manager. We will do our own, we’ll train. We’ll provide capacity development programmes. We have the Clubs Capacity Development Pathway. We ran it before the Annual General Assembly,  a club development program for the clubs in the Premiership and Championships. We showed them about corporate governance, we showed them about marketing, we showed them about media development. These are the things a club is expected to put in place, how to plan and what to do with it. We will do another Clubs Capacity Development Programme this second half of season. We will also do for referees, coaches, player development and media. We will we continue to train. That's what FIFA does. FIFA provides training and continues to provide. We’ll continue to provide within the scope of whatever 
funding we get and whatever partners we get to support us. It is left for the clubs and players to take advantage of our training and improve the management of their clubs.

From your point of view, where do you expect NWFL to be in the next four years? 

Well, I expect that we will have a product that can stand the test of time. I expect we would have told 
our stories better. We have a target of a million people showing up in the stadium at the end of the 
season, and then a million likes across all available Social media Platforms. We expect to have constantly 
been on TV even if it is one match a week. We expect to be on TV and then be generating income from 
advertising revenue. We expect that our Football and the Girl Child program will be well-funded and 
through it we’ll be able to chart the trajectory of girls who have decided to play football professionally . 

We expect that our capacity development program will have onboarded at least anything between 50 and a hundred new female coaches, at the rate of 25 every year. We expect that we should have onboarded at least 50 female referees. We expect that we would have done a development program for our players that sees them begin to prepare for life after football. A proper coherent program, working with partners that will deliver a Career Pathway beyond football but leverage the fact that they have been well informed to prepare for life after football. I expect that the league and its matches and all of the off field activities would have been fully funded the way we want them to be funded. 

The second stanza of the league Will start in January . How prepared are we now to take it to the end? 

We are well prepared. The league will not be truncated. We are starting the Championship at the end of February, and we are starting the States League at the end of April. The three legs of the league will not be truncated. That I can say with utmost confidence. We'll play three Super 6 tournaments this year, for the Premiership, the Championships and for the States League. So, we are ready to go. That's not a problem. We didn't stop anything in the 1st phase other than maybe move one match from a Wednesday to a Thursday or move from 4:00pm to 2:00pm. We started the day we said we’ll start and ended the day we said we’ll end. Nobody abandoned any match. Nobody wrote us and said we can't play. It's tough we know, and I talked to the clubs and I know how tough it is, but in the second half of the season, we believe we can complete what we started successfully. 

When when we came on board most companies had already committed their annual budgets elsewhere and couldn’t do much for us. But we believe that this coming year as bad as things look from an economic point of view, we will get quite a bit of the support we need and make progress. 

As super powers in African Women football. I always tell people that it took the Super Eagles 44 years to get to the World Cup. But our girls got to the World Cup at the first trial. Now, they have introduced the African Women's Champion’s League tournament and a superpower like Nigeria in women football has not played it yet. Our clubs are found wanting for the past two seasons or three. Are you concerned about this? 

No I’m not.

Why ?

Why should I be? You’ve answered your own question. If the thing had gone on for ten years then I would 
be concerned but two years? No, I’m not. 

We spent 40 years to win the Africa Men Championship that Enyimba won. Are you sure it's not going to be the same in the women category? 

Let us wait until then. God, keeping both of us alive, If it takes forty years, then it will take forty years. We worry too much about what is not important. I'm more worried about the ecosystem within Nigeria that will enable girls to play football and earn a living. This is the reason why sports is where it is in this country. We worry about the 10 percent that doesn't affect 90 percent. CAF themselves seem like a confused lot.

How ?

Let's not get into that. We should be worried about a solid foundation for women football, so we 
can guarantee the quality of what we are producing. When we get to that place where the quality is assured, we will win it. Not that of Enyimba which is beginning to look like a flash in the pan. After Enyimba has won it who else has won it? After Enyimba which Nigerian club has reached a final? Nobody. Exactly, because the foundations are hollow, seeing as we insist on building our house from the roof. Those we think we want to supersede are those who are building their house with solid  foundations. For me, winning championships is the cherry on the pie. Once your foundations are solid, you will begin to win consistently. You will not get it if your foundations are not solid. Morocco's women's football 
foundations are more solid than ours and they started after us. What this means is that we must focus on a proper foundation that's deep enough and strong enough to withstand shocks and enable us to build our house properly. 

So, I'm not worried. I'd like us to play  in the CAF Women’s Champions League and I’d encourage us to play there. We will work with our clubs to help them reach there so there are a few things we hope to do in that direction.  The qualifiers for our teams, we will look at how we help our clubs so they don't go in there and the first time they are playing people from other countries is during the qualifiers. Our teams don't play any friendlies prior to the qualifiers; the first time they play other people Is during the qualifiers. That is not very helpful so we hope to support them by trying to put some things in place that will enable them to play one or two matches with other clubs from outside before it's time to play the qualifiers. That way they get acclimatized to playing other clubs. 
However, I still maintain that the most important for us Is a proper domestic football ecosystem for women where they can earn a proper living wage, and our clubs can find a considerable measure of financial security and independence. Those are the things we are preparing for in the new year. For us, 2024 is about digging the foundation and putting the blocks and cement to make sure that the league is structurally sound. Once we’ve done that and see the season through to the end by ensuring everything we have put down works, then we review. The one that will not work by the next season, we will get to see it and review if we continue with it. The one that will work we will now build on it. We will do our best to implement everything that is in our plan so that we know what to reinforce and then our second season will be more about consolidation now that the foundation has been set in this first season.

So, what is the message that you have now for your followers? 

They should follow us more. They should go to all our social media handles and follow the NWFL on 
X, follow us on Instagram, follow us on LinkedIn. Go to our matches; we want more people to come to our matches. Our gates are free; come to our matches, support our clubs and our girls. Go and follow our clubs; find a club that you would be attached to, and start following the club, drawing attention to the club. Help us to make a lot of noise because the more noise we make the better it is. At least, when I walk into a corporate office and say, see we started with only three thousand, ten thousand but now we have 25,000, 30,000, 50,000 likes; we get cumulative 50,000 likes every week, we do this, we do that. People will take us seriously. It is about the data, so let's see how much we can build on that to let corporate organizations know we exist and to let development agencies know we exist. That's it. Let’s support our girls. It Is the time for women so support us.

So Where do you as Nkechi Obi want to leave women league football in the next four years? 

A more solid structure. I want to see if we can go from our projected 7,000 players by the end of 
2024. In four years’ time, I fully expect that we should be able to count 30,000 girls and women playing 
football; a four-fold increase in the number of girls playing football professionally. I want to see at least 100 female coaches, such that 70 to 80 percent of our clubs will be coached by a woman. I want to 
see at least 50 new referees, all women, so that we don't put too much pressure on the few that we 
have. I want to see that this league goes from when we look at the turnover in our league, we should 
be able to be talking that this league has gone from spending about N2.5 billion in the league to about N10 billion; a fourfold increase of what is being spent in the league. This means that if you are spending 
N10 billon you should be generating a hundred and ten percent of that. 

I want to see trading in players, domestic trading generating the kind of revenue that would make people decide that they want to come to Nigeria to play. Tanzania is already doing it. Tanzania is the one representing Africa in the top ten in the world of transfers In or out. And Tanzania just started which day? That is my concern; that Morocco and Tanzania are doing what we ought to be doing and reaping the rewards for developing a plan and sticking to it diligently. Therefore, I want to focus on building the domestic ecosystem and keeping our players here to play and bringing in people from abroad. They should be coming here because it is more lucrative to come to Nigeria to play. That's what I want to see.