Former Super Eagles custodian Idah Peterside believes Nigeria will be ready to host the World Cup in the next 40 years, once the country has achieved some sort of stability.
Peterside expressed scepticism about the country’s readiness to host the World Cup anytime soon on Friday’s broadcast of Sunrise Daily on Channels TV.
“On record presently, the only playing field which we have is a grass stadium and it is the Uyo stadium, but 20 anything(years) is still very long maybe in the next 40 years, we would have had some kind of stability,” he said.
Nigeria last hosted a global football tournament back in 2009, which was the U-17 FIFA World Cup with Switzerland emerging as champions and Golden Eaglets taking the runner-up spot.
A former minister of Works and Housing Babatunde Raji Fashola, last December advocated for the country to bid to host the premium world football competition.
“That is the stage where National anthems are rendered with National flags and colours displayed to the pride and admiration of patriots and perhaps the envy of competitors,” Fashola had said.
“A bid to host the World Cup by Nigeria alone or along with other West African nations must be led by Nigeria.”
However, the ex-international stressed the rarity of good playing fields as a major setback pointing out that the Uyo Stadium is one of the few with natural grass.
“It’s as simple, as you know coming back to the basis, we must have our stadia okay look at Port Harcourt- now we watched the CAF Cup,” he stated.
“We have a stadium that can keep 40,000 now what we are not doing is that we are not maintaining our facilities now we have a real sports minister this is what we must do we talk sports without the playing ground sports without the facility you can’t play sports in the sky except there’s a sport where you fly a plane so every sport is on earth.”
He predicted that Nigeria would need up to 40 years to achieve the stability required for such an ambitious project.
The 49-year-old underlined the importance of sporting facilities, arguing that conversations about sports are incomplete without sufficient stadiums and infrastructure.
“Therefore we need to take care of the earth that produces the sportsmen. We need facilities look at our national stadium in Lagos it’s an eyesore everything is falling apart so we have these stadiums everywhere.”
The former goalkeeper emphasised the need for proactive steps in sports development, emphasizing the value of maintaining and nurturing sporting facilities.
He also lamented the deterioration of Lagos’ national stadium and urged for a return to basics in sports development. He emphasized that neglecting these facilities could limit Nigeria’s ability to compete on the global stage, not only as a future World Cup host but also as a genuine challenger in a variety of sporting disciplines.
“We have facilities everywhere like in Port Harcourt I live in Port Harcourt now we have three stadiums in Port Harcourt, and we play well. This stadium must be working we have the civic centre that had everything that used to have the swimming pool we used to have things that we would use but these facilities are not being maintained and once these facilities are not maintained how do you expect us to firstly chunk out athletes and be able to contest or contain the world we have to go back to basics.”