By Babatunde Akinbinu

For millions of Nigerian Arsenal supporters, there is understandably considerable excitement about what Mikel Arteta and his players might achieve this season. My own thoughts, however, wandered beyond the footballers on the pitch and towards the large professional workforce operating quietly behind them. Among Arsenal’s medical personnel is Takahiro Yamamoto, the Japanese soft-tissue therapist who has worked with the first team since 2015. That raised a simple question: why should Nigerians imagine their opportunities at Arsenal mainly as footballers, supporters or commercial partners? Why are Nigerian doctors, physiotherapists, sports scientists, analysts and other specialists not similarly visible within clubs of this stature?

The question becomes more striking when the football histories of Nigeria and Japan are placed beside each other. Nigeria won the inaugural FIFA U-16 World Championship in China in 1985, defeating West Germany 2-0 in Beijing. Japan would not make its senior FIFA World Cup debut until France 1998, thirteen years after Nigeria’s Golden Eaglets became world champions. Nigeria later won Olympic football gold, qualified repeatedly for FIFA World Cups and supplied generations of players to professional leagues around the world.

Yet more than forty years after that first global triumph, Nigeria has not produced a comparable international pathway for the professionals who develop and sustain athletes. We have proved repeatedly that our athletes can travel; we have been much less successful at creating similar routes for the expertise travelling behind them.

There is an equally useful African example in South African physiotherapist Dr. Tanushree Pillay, whose career developed through her country’s strong rugby structures. After accumulating substantial domestic and national-team experience, she worked around the Springboks before eventually entering the medical structure at Paris Saint-Germain. Her progression shows that African origin itself does not prevent a practitioner from reaching sophisticated European sporting institutions. The more important question is whether that professional first has somewhere credible to build a convincing record at home.

Nigeria’s Fragmented Pathway
Nigeria does not completely lack sports medicine or sports science expertise, and any serious discussion must acknowledge that fact. Experienced national-team doctors and physiotherapists exist, private rehabilitation centres are emerging, and universities already conduct research in relevant fields. The University of Medical Sciences in Ondo, for example, established an Institute of Sports Science and Medicine in 2024. These are encouraging developments, but they still resemble separate islands rather than parts of one connected national career system.

A young Nigerian physiotherapist considering sports specialisation must therefore ask where a serious career will lead after additional years of training. The same question confronts graduates interested in biomechanics, exercise physiology, sports psychology, nutrition, performance analysis or strength and conditioning. Passion cannot sustain specialist professions when other fields provide clearer employment, advancement, recognition and financial security. Nigeria will struggle to produce internationally competitive specialists until these careers first make professional and economic sense within Nigeria.

The starting point should be wherever athletes are already employed and public or private money is already being spent. Every leading professional football club should progressively maintain properly qualified medical, physiotherapy and physical-performance personnel as part of club licensing requirements. Clubs should also provide access to nutrition, psychology and performance analysis, using shared regional arrangements where full departments are presently unaffordable. Better support should improve player performance and availability, increase IGR for largely government-owned clubs and improve returns for private club owners.

The principle should extend beyond football to athletics, basketball, boxing, wrestling, rugby, volleyball, handball and Nigeria’s other competitive sports. Federations should maintain teams of qualified professionals working regularly with elite athletes and development programmes rather than assembling support personnel mainly before foreign competitions. Academies similarly need medical screening, injury prevention, nutrition, conditioning and rehabilitation alongside the coaches and scouts traditionally employed. Each setting can become both an athlete-development environment and a genuine source of employment for trained specialists.

Universities represent another obvious opportunity because Nigeria already teaches medicine, physiotherapy, psychology, nutrition, physical education and other relevant disciplines across many institutions. Competitive university sport can support practical performance centres where students learn, academics conduct useful research and surrounding athletes receive specialist services. Such centres would help connect classroom knowledge with Nigerian athletes, clubs and academies requiring those services. They would also give younger professionals somewhere credible to acquire experience before national or international opportunities arise.

State governments can build similar capacity from money already spent on stadiums, clubs, festivals and sporting competitions every year. States preparing teams for National Sports Festivals should maintain permanent medical and performance teams throughout the competitive cycle instead of assembling them episodically. Lagos, Ogun, Gombe and other states have announced sporting investments and training initiatives that deserve acknowledgement. The next question is how many specialists these programmes consistently train, employ, certify and expose to higher levels of practice.

The federal sports system faces the same challenge despite years of investment in sports medicine, facilities and high-performance development. Nigeria already has professionals who have worked at Olympic Games, FIFA competitions, African championships and other important international events. Their accumulated experience should become an educational resource through planned mentoring, understudy appointments and real opportunities for younger practitioners to accompany national teams. Every Olympic cycle should leave Nigeria with more experienced specialists than existed when preparations for that cycle began.

What Professional Bodies Must Do
Professional associations must also accept a larger share of responsibility rather than leaving every expectation with government. NASMED, NAPHER-SD, the Nigeria Society of Physiotherapy and related specialist bodies already sit between universities, professionals, employers and sporting institutions. Their conferences and advocacy are useful, but members should increasingly see clear routes from association participation into training, mentorship, certification and employment opportunities. International affiliations should produce professional openings that ordinary qualified members can realistically access.

Their collective responsibilities are straightforward and should be measurable over time. They should help define minimum standards, organise meaningful continuing education, create mentorship networks and connect younger practitioners with experienced sports professionals. They should also negotiate credible international attachments, encourage research addressing real Nigerian performance problems and publish the opportunities created for their members. Professional bodies should help make their disciplines attractive career choices rather than remain organisations known mainly through conferences, elections and annual meetings.

Government recognition of these associations should equally carry responsibility for maintaining credible membership records and professional standards. Associations represented within sporting committees should show what training, placements and career opportunities their participation has generated for qualified Nigerians. Cooperation across disciplines is particularly important because modern athlete care involves doctors, physiotherapists, scientists, psychologists, nutritionists and other specialists working together. Nigerian sport will benefit more from shared standards and joint development than from professional bodies defending isolated territories.

A practical response is to create international opportunities for people who have already demonstrated competence within Nigerian sport. Universities, federations and government can negotiate attachments with foreign clubs, sports medicine centres, universities and established performance institutions in different countries. Nigerian embassies and high commissions can help identify credible partners and make institutional introductions rather than leaving every practitioner to start from nothing. International training should become something qualified professionals can compete for through open and transparent programmes.

Corporate sponsorship can also become part of this process without requiring enormous new public expenditure. Companies already investing in national teams and major sporting programmes can reserve modest portions of their commitments for professional training and short attachments abroad. That investment could support doctors, physiotherapists, scientists and analysts whose expertise would continue benefiting Nigerian athletes long after a sponsorship campaign ends. Sponsors would also gain a tangible development legacy extending beyond branding, match bonuses and advertising opportunities.

Nigeria should equally use the international footprint of its athletes more intelligently without turning individual footballers into employment agents. Nigerian players already work inside clubs containing sophisticated medical, rehabilitation, sports science, data and performance departments that most Nigerian practitioners never experience. Formal relationships with those clubs could create short observational placements for professionals who already possess appropriate qualifications and domestic experience. Similar opportunities can be developed around Nigerian basketballers, athletes and competitors succeeding internationally in other sports.
Actionable Pathways Forward

The next 10 years should focus on connecting existing Nigerian resources rather than creating another large agency with directors, offices and administrative overheads. Nigeria should agree clear minimum standards for major sports-support professions and maintain a credible national database of appropriately qualified practitioners. National teams should provide openly advertised junior appointments and supervised opportunities for younger professionals to gain progressively more demanding experience. Clubs and federations receiving public money should also demonstrate how they develop professional personnel alongside their athletes.

Advanced education should connect directly with actual employment rather than producing qualifications for which no meaningful market exists. Scholarships and certification programmes should concentrate on areas genuinely needed in modern sport, including rehabilitation, biomechanics, physiology, nutrition, psychology and performance analytics. Universities, clubs, state systems and federations should provide practical positions where newly trained specialists can immediately use what they have learned. Professional associations should help ensure that certificates represent real competence rather than simply another item added to a curriculum vitae.

Success should ultimately be measured through numbers that government, associations, sporting institutions and the public can independently examine. How many specialists were trained, where were they employed, what qualifications did they obtain and how many received meaningful international experience? How many clubs, universities and states now employ qualified sports medicine and performance professionals throughout the sporting year? How many Nigerians eventually secure jobs inside recognised clubs, federations, laboratories and sports medicine institutions outside the country?

Countries such as Qatar, Singapore and Malaysia already understand that a modern sports economy involves far more than producing athletes and hosting competitions. They have invested in sports medicine, research, technology, professional education and specialist employment alongside athlete development. Nigeria possesses a larger population and an international sporting history that several younger sporting economies cannot claim. Those advantages mean little economically if the professions and businesses surrounding athletes remain fragmented and underdeveloped.
The Larger Opportunity

This concern comes partly from practical experience within Nigerian football medicine and the structures surrounding elite sport over several years. That experience includes service within the NFF Sports Medicine Committee and medical responsibilities around male and female top-flight domestic football. Participation within medical education activities in the Nigerian Olympic movement has similarly reinforced the importance of continuous professional development around competitive athletes. The lesson is not that Nigeria lacks intelligent professionals, but that too many opportunities remain disconnected from one another.

Nigeria has exported enough internationally successful athletes since 1985 to have created many comparable opportunities for professionals working around their performance. Better Nigerian doctors, physiotherapists and scientists would also produce healthier, better prepared and ultimately more valuable athletes within our own sporting system. The employment argument, sporting argument and economic argument therefore arrive at essentially the same destination.

Dr. Babatunde Akinbinu, MBChB, MPH, MPA, MBA, MPhil is Former Executive Board Member, Ondo State Football Association