AS part of its efforts to reposition the Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL), the Federal Government says it is talking with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to prosecute league managers found guilty of match fixing.

Warning that it would henceforth treat any case of match fixing as a criminal case, Minister of Sports/Chairman of the National Sports Commission (NSC), Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, while presenting his scorecard during the mid-term report on the progress and achievements of President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration in a Ministerial Platform Monday in Abuja, attributed the successes recorded in football in recent times to the restoration of peace in the Glass House.

The Guardian recalls that the Nigeria Police has not prosecuted any club official indicted in the 2012/2013 league season’s match fixing case involving Lobi Stars of Markurdi and Sunshine stars of Akure months after the NFF transferred the case file to it for further investigation.

Reeling out the Federal Government’s contributions in repositioning sports from 2012 till date, the minister argued that the efforts would be in vain should Nigerian youths continue to leave the country in droves to obscure leagues in the world or languish in European and Asian jails, adding that making Nigerian league viable would checkmate such trends.

Abdulahi, who regretted that Nigerian league is now rated below their South African counterparts and other African countries even when it was obvious that the country boasts a better national team, noted that the League Management Company (LMC) would strive to reposition and make the league more competitive.

“It has assumed even a more dangerous dimension now that hundreds of Nigerian youths are languishing in Chinese prisons. People have deceptively used them to traffic hard drugs outside this country. We are bent on revising this trend and that informed part of what we are doing in the Nigerian league.

“Since the setting up of the League Management Company (LMC) anybody watching Nigerian league will notice that there are tremendous improvement. The quality of football has improved, the quality of officiating has also improved. With the way we are going, what it means is that very soon, Nigerian league will compete favourably with other major leagues in Europe and other, ” he noted.