The Fuss About Foreign Born Nigerian


The dust must have settled now among a cross-section of the Nigerian fans and media following the invitation of Tammy Abraham to the English senior team. Gareth Southgate has always stressed that he will give a lot of young stars a stake to claim the English shirt if they merit it.

 The question now is; what is the fuss about foreign-bred Nigerians? The current leadership of the Nigerian Football Federation under Amaju Pinnick has vigorously pursued foreign-born Nigerians such that when he eventually leaves the office, that could be one of his legacies. So after successfully negotiating the switch of players like Alex Iwobi (Arsenal) and Ola Aina (Chelsea - currently on loan to Hull), he decided to pursue Abraham's switch of allegiance to Nigeria. Pinnick had stated in one TV interviews that Tammy's dad was his friend.He believed their friendship could be a factor that would ease the switch.

 Some weeks back, the picture of Tammy Abraham, Pinnick and Tammy's dad was seen on social media. Even the NFF twitter handle pasted the picture which somewhat was to validate Abraham's conversion. Later on the same day, Tammy Abraham came out to denounce switching to play for Nigeria. He further reaffirmed his commitment to England. Some are of the opinions that English set up moved swiftly to prevent the player from being hijacked by Nigeria.
Tammy Abraham in the English Shirt

My personal opinion on  foreign-bred players:

 Nothing wrong with invitation

 I do not see anything wrong with foreign-born Nigerians that want to feature in their country of origin. After all, in the 80's Tunji Banjo, John Chiedozie, Emeka Nwajiobi and Reuben Agboola all switched to represent their country of origin. Moreso, we could have benefited from the addition of a player of David Alaba's stature. However, I believe that the invitation of these players should be complimentary and we should not be begging such players to feature for their country of their origin. A story that buttressed this was the recent approach made by Genot Rohr ( Nigeria's Manager),in his quest to add more to the defence department, he sought for German born Nigerian Kevin Akpoguma. The former German under 20 was quoted to have said;

 " I feel honoured of couse but i am German. I was born here so i should play for Germany too" .

Ideally, I want to see the NFF exert the same energy in setting up a proper system for football development . There are many players in Nigeria who with proper structure will thrive. I think when we just focus on foreign-born alone we will be jeopardizing the talent within.

 What does the future hold for Abraham

 Tammy will have to impress Gareth Southgate as he is still behind Jamie Vardy and Harry Kane in the pecking order. Therefore, he will have to seize this opportunity and grab it with both hands. On the other hand, it could go wrong and he may end up looking back with bags of regrets if he gets dumped along the way. There are players who had hoped to tie their aspiration with the English team but fell by the wayside.
John Fashanu - He had only 2 caps for England but got relegated to obscurity, the former Wimbledon striker regrets turning down Nigeria to date. Other players in the same category are John Salako, Chris Armstrong  Ugo Ehiogu Gabriel Agbolahan, Carlton Cole, Sydney Sam, Denis Aaogo and Patrick Owoomoyela.




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