A member of the NFF board, who described Dame Jonathan as the Super Falcons’ number one fan, Dilichukwu Onyedimma, said at the weekend in Abuja that the invitation was as a mark of honour for the First Lady, whom she noted has been a strong pillar for the emancipation of women in the country.
Onyedimma, who is the Chairman of the Nigeria Women Football League (NWFL), added that the team would need the patience and good luck of the first lady to succeed at the world stage and make a history of being the first African side, male or female, to win the World Cup.
The women league boss, who also used the occasion to reel out the achievements of female football since her election in 2011, noted that after the initial challenges that confronted her board, they have been able to reposition the Women League with the result being the discovery of young and talented girls from across the country, who have been the pillars of all the cadre of women national teams in the country.
She recalled the exploits of Nigerian female footballers in international championships, including the National U-17 women team, the Flamingoes, who reached the quarterfinals of the FIFA U-17 World Cup in Costa Rica earlier in the year with players plying their trade in the local league.
“Apart from the Flamingoes, we also had the national U-20 women team, the Falconets, that went to Canada in August and played to the finals of the FIFA U-20 Women World Cup with 99 percent of the players from our league here in Nigeria, only one player came from a school in the United States.
“Only last weekend, we took another set of Super Falcons team to Namibia to reclaim the African Women Championship. In the victorious team, only five players came from overseas, the remaining 17 are all from our league clubs here at home. All these are the products of our repositioned women league, which can compete very favourably with what is obtained in other parts of the modern world,” she said.
The female football boss revealed that the present board has been working hard to ensure that league clubs had some support, especially from the private sector.
This, she said, will become possible with the commissioning of various marketing agents, whom she noted have been working assiduously to attract the sponsors.
Onyedinma explained that to make women football more appealing to Nigerians, especially the corporate world, her board recently concluded the incorporation of the Nigeria Women Football League (NWFL) as well as entering into a partnership deal with the Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) for live transmission of female league matches starting from the next season.
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