When a situation happens once, you could pass it off as a happenstance. When it happens a second time, you can call it a coincidence, but anything after that becomes a habit that needs addressing.

And that is what this article is about – calling out Monday Odigie and letting him know that the media are not the cause of his frustrations and do not deserve to be treated like a piece of trash as he always does.

By now you might have seen the embarrassing post-match reaction of the Bendel Insurance coach after his side drew with Enyimba in their matchday 21 NPFL fixture.

The Benin Arsenal played a goalless draw at home against the defending champions on Saturday and Odigie wasn’t satisfied with some of the calls made by the officials, so he decided to take it out on innocent journalists who were doing their jobs.

The 2009 league winner countered every question he was asked aggressively, went personal with a journalist for asking a harmless question, and walked out on the queuing journalists who had waited to get his thoughts on the game.

A Timeline Of Unruly Behaviour

That post-match incident could have been brushed off as the one-off reaction of a man who was frustrated because things didn’t go his way on the day, but that excuse can only be reserved for any coach not named Monday Odigie.

This season alone, Odigie has had multiple face-offs with the media after games and he recently extended his bad habit to the stands.

On Matchday 20, Insurance’s game against Sporting Lagos had to be stopped briefly when the 59-year-old engaged a spectator who had said something he didn’t like. He then followed that up with another livid post-match interview where he blamed officials for his team’s defeat.

To be fair to him, that was the first time he behaved that way in a presser in a long time. In fact, in December he did some interviews where he acted calm and professional and got praises from journalists who felt he had turned a new leaf but what do they say about a leopard shedding its skin?

Those praises came exactly two months after he had blamed Bendel Insurance management for the woes of his team and after famously dropping the biggest quote by an NPFL coach in recent years: ‘Football is all about participation, not winning’ when his team was knocked out by RS Berkane in the CAF Confederations Cup in September.

Sometimes, it’s not what he says that is the issue, it is how he says it. He always comes across as someone in a bad mood even when his team has won.

The Bigger Picture

Monday Odigie is a serial offender when you talk about abuse and disregard of the media, but he is not the biggest culprit – that title belongs to the NPFL board, the NFF media, and every other body responsible for football in Nigeria.

At least, Odigie obliges the media and shows up for interviews, the Super Eagles handlers would rather lock journalists out of the team’s training. For a team that does very little media content compared to their compatriots, it is laughable when they shut out external media.

The league body is worse. Name me a top league in 2024 where pre and post-match press conferences are not mandatory. Every week teams go out and play without much buzz around the games. Media is like an afterthought for the league organizers here. No significant allocation is set out for the media from the seasonal budgets, everything happens as we go.

Should we talk about how league fixtures are arranged and rearranged without serious consideration for the media?

The media plan for Nigeria football is a mess and it is the major reason the stakeholders have found the league hard to sell. It’s also why coaches like Monday Odigie look at media men like they are trash, cause really, where is the media in the chain of priority in Nigerian football? 

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