THE Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) and Zenith Bank Plc yesterday in Lagos announced a partnership agreement for youth football development and capacity building programmes.

The agreement, witnessed by the top brass of the NFF and the financial institution at Zenith Bank’s Victoria Island headquarters, according to the bank’s Managing Director, Mr. Peter Amangbo, is an indication that “we are ready to empower the new crop of young and accountable administrators at the NFF to reach lofty heights.”

According to Amamgbo, “This is a crop of people you see doing things and benchmarking them against global best practices. For a very long time, we have not seen this in Nigeria football administration.

“The quality of people leading the NFF has spurred us to commit to giving them support. We are ready and happy to empower them to reach the lofty heights they have set for themselves.”

Highlighting the thrust of the partnership, NFF First Vice President, Seyi Akinwunmi, disclosed that the deal would see Zenith Bank helping the federation’s comprehensive youth development agenda involving U-13 and U-15 programmes billed to herald a new competition tagged, The Next Eagles Championship.

According to Akinwunmi, the NFF’s “holistic Future Generation Plan is aimed at engendering a pool of talented young men and women for all categories of the national teams at all times. Today, everybody talks about the senior national team. That should not be so. We want to create a situation whereby people will also talk about grassroots and youth competitions.

“The NFF is committed to working hand-in-hand with every organ that has to something to do with the youth, in order to realise our objectives.