The Nigeria Premier Football League (NPFL) is seeking collaboration with a betting integrity company to track and apprehend players, coaches, club managers and match officials that are involved in betting in order to protect the integrity of Nigeria’s elite football league.
NPFL Chairman Gbenga Elegbeleye disclosed this while speaking to newsmen on the sideline of the 2024 match commissioners annual seminar held on Wednesday at the Merit House, Abuja.
Elegbeleye said the move to ensure that decision-making in NPFL’s matches are based entirely on merit and not for personal financial gain in order to safeguard the integrity of the league.
“Our major concern in the Nigeria Premier Football League (NPFL) is purely the integrity of the league. Your league is rated by the way your country’s people see it rather than the ways and manner people outside perceive it. We are talking to a betting integrity company to establish a relationship with them to determine how to track players, coaches, club managers and match officials that are involved in betting,” Elegbeleye said.
The former federal lawmaker turned football administrator said the interest of the NPFL board and management under his watch is to make Nigeria’s top flight league one of the best in Africa, but said it can only be achieved if all stakeholders cooperate together.
“All we are interested in is to make the league one of the best in Africa. We can achieve it if we all cooperate together, but unfortunately some of your people, I would not mention names, I see you guys as partners in progress and I have to tell this today. Journalists are our best friends in football and worst enemies as well.”
Some few are being used as attack dogs by some private individuals who have pure personal interest in the system. They would call some of you to start attacking the NPFL chairman simply because they have personal interests that we were not ready to accommodate. The league is not for anybody, it is for the system. I’m just the chairman and I don’t have any personal interest in it. let the league flow and be better than what we are seeing in the rest of the world.”
