The Lagos-based football club, Sporting Lagos, a newcomer to the Nigeria Premier Football League (NPFL), has brought more vibe and energy than 10-year veterans.
Though not the first privately owned club in the NPFL, Sporting Lagos has woven its progress to create a community with its fans, not only those based in Lagos. The club’s vision is “We want to spend the next 40 years building generations of football talents in Nigeria.”
The action points have been a unique home experience and the immediate availability of club paraphernalia online and offline. They have also partnered with some brands to make their home games a family-oriented experience because you see people with wives and children and expatriates in the stadium.
Shola Akinade formed the club in 2022 and they are managed by Godwin Enakhena, the former General Manager of MFM football club, whom he also led to the NPFL from the Nigeria National League (NNL).
Sporting Lagos also started in the NNL, where they made a lot of noise and started to garner attention. Because of their intentional character and intensity, their opponents began calling them ‘Noisy Lagosians’, which Fola Olatunji-David calls a compliment.
Mr Olatunji-David is a board member of the club and emphasised that the Sporting Lagos idea is a ‘community-based football team” which inspires value and change in society. All this has become possible because of a strong board that intentionally changed the face of a privately run club within the Nigeria football ecosystem.
A technical adviser to the Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Mr Olatunji-David spoke to PREMUM TIMES in an exclusive interview at the CJID-organised Media and Development Conference in Abuja.
“We aren’t trying to take over the league; we are just trying to participate, and we are grateful for the opportunity to participate.
“We appreciate and respect the work that has been done in the Nigeria Premier Football League over the years, and our theory of change is that there are more Nigerians that would love to be part of the Football ecosystem if you can make the conditions right for them.”
The Right conditions
According to Mr Olatunji-David, the club focused on the right conditions for the fans and players.
“Conditions being right means creating an atmosphere where they [fans] see themselves taking an active part. So whether it’s giving them the opportunity to bring their friends and feel safe, whether it’s creating football players or profiles of football players they know and love the same way they love [Lionel] Messi, [Cristiano] Ronaldo, we want them to love [Olisema] Ekene, Jonathan [Alukwu]; we want them to love [Junior] Lokosa.
“Whether it is creating football matches they see is free and fair, you know, applying technology, streaming the matches on Social Media, talking about sharing clips so that they believe that the game isn’t being “fixed” by officiating in the Premier League which we have seen to be mostly fair.”
Creating a culture to be copied
Mr Olatunji-David then buttressed that the club’s vision is to create an environment worthy of emulation.
“Our job and vision are just how do we create a football club that people are proud of and that will give people a sense of community in Lagos and across Nigeria. Imagine, I have been outside Nigeria and I have seen somebody wearing the Sporting Lagos jersey, somebody I didn’t know before, and it gave me immense pride.
“And if you walk around Lagos and you go to places you don’t expect people to know Sporting Lagos and they are shouting up Sporting, because they are wearing a Sporting jersey, the same way they will shout up Blues because they see a Chelsea jersey, that’s what we want to create.
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“So we are proud of the success and growth; it was an ambition all along that you did the right thing and hoped for the best, but the right thing isn’t just the marketing and the branding “efizzy”.
“The right thing is also focusing on the football, the recruitment, training, profile, player health, and welfare of the players. As they like to call it, we did the off-pitch things very well; we also had to make sure that we do the on-pitch very well.”
Sporting Lagos’ community projects
Mr Olatunji-David also revealed that the club is working on several projects to reflect growth and development in the club’s community.
“You know, when we started Sporting Lagos, they used to call us the Tech Boys; they used to call us that or “Noisy Lagosians” with our vuvuzela and all that, but we aren’t Sporting Lagos Island; we are Sporting Lagos.
“There was a time we even saw a misinformation campaign that proclaimed that the team was made up of non-Lagosians. So we went out to look at the team and out of 20+ players, 16 of them were from around Lagos. From Ajegunle to Badagry, Lagos Island, Alimosho, and Surulere, and so on, in all these communities, we encourage our players to be ambassadors.
“We have launched an academy where, beyond football, we want to teach people life skills. We run support programs, and just tomorrow (Wednesday, 15 November), we will be in Unilag supporting one of their sports festivals.
“One of our goals is to encourage people to focus on sports because they are in the university. I think for us, the critical part is helping people understand that you don’t have to sacrifice one part of your life because you are a sportsperson.
“It will help you be a well-rounded individual, and I think with time, we will continue to grow and build more community projects. And in every community we are part of, we will try to encourage people. For example, we have had almost no incidence of people coming to Sporting Lagos’ games and being harassed. The reason is we do welfare programs for the area boys.
“Now, they are even the ones wearing traffic warden jerseys with Sporting Lagos caps directing traffic and showing you where to park, and we even paid them upfront. Our goal is, instead of bringing programs and dumping it on people, I believe we find locals and see what they need and build out of that,” he added.
As of Matchday 10, Sporting Lagos was 14th on the NPFL table with 12 points.
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