Ten of the league's 20 teams went through the whole season unbeaten at home, while no team won more than three away matches in the entire campaign. The runners-up, Enyimba, did not even concede a goal at home, winning 17 and drawing two of their 19 home games while winning just once away. The disparity between Gombe United's home and away form is even more striking: they managed to win 18 and draw one of their 19 home games, scoring an average of more than two goals per game, but away they lost every match, managing a grand total of four goals in 19 games. What is going on?

Enyimba's sweep of home clean sheets is unprecedented but the overall trend of home invincibility and away vulnerability is not new in the NPL, where travelling teams face perilous challenges relating to violent crowds, questionable refereeing and, indeed, travel itself. Arriving just before kick-off after long road trips, often on hazardous surfaces, is far from ideal preparation for players. And they do not always arrive. Last season two matches were postponed when first Sunshine Stars and then Wikki Tourists were robbed on their way to games. Mostly, of course, teams do make it to grounds – and that is when they must contend with fans and referees.

Referees must contend with fans too – for the men in the middle being beaten up is not so much a risk of the job as an inevitability. Wikki Tourists and Kwara United both had results overturned this season after particularly vicious attacks on officials at the grounds, while Enugu Rangers were ordered to play six matches behind closed doors for similar reasons. Those punishments were imposed after referees threatened a boycott and demanded bodyguards, though the officials relented after discussions with the League Management Company (LMC), which was set up last year to bring order to a league where violence, corruption and legal disputes between clubs are obscuring the performances of highly-talented, low-paid players (eight of the 23 Super Eagles that Stephen Keshi took to the summer's Confederations Cup play in the NPL).

Lack of funding constrains the LMC's ability to help referees in one crucial way: officials do not receive salaries from the league, rather they get "indemnities" that are paid before each match by the home team. At least, that is how the arrangement is supposed to work but referees complain that some clubs try to make payment performance-related. It is now common for away teams to seek to ensure balance before a game by offering to cover referees' indemnities too. "Sometimes the quality of refereeing can come down to which team offered the most generous expenses," a club official who did not wish to be named told the Guardian.

Even when referees are determined not to be influenced by payments, they must show even greater fortitude to ignore the demands of certain crowds. And even if they do, that is still no guarantee that the home mob will not get their way. "There was an infamous case several years ago when a referee, Dogo Yabilsu, awarded a penalty to Sharks at Kwara United and fans invaded the pitch," recalls the Nigerian editor of kickoffnigeria.com Colin Udoh. "Yabilsu was a colonel in the army and he took out his service pistol and chased the fans off. But Sharks were still afraid of what would happen if they scored so their player deliberately missed the spotkick."

Dolphins' players were equally intimidated at Kano Pillars a couple of seasons ago – so when the home side were awarded a late penalty several of them pleaded with their goalkeeper, Sunday Rotimi, a former international renowned for his penalty-saving prowess, to dive the wrong way, which he duly did.

Football does not, of course, exist in isolation. The sport is affected by problems that bedevil the country in general. That is true for corruption and funding difficulties, and also when it comes to political strife. Accordingly, north-east Nigeria, where the Boko Haram Islamist jihadist group operates, is an especially daunting away assignment – and not just because of the fear of being caught up in incidents such as the bomb attack that forced the postponement of last season's clash between Kano Pillars and Enyimba.

Supersport, the television company with the NPL screening rights, considers the region too volatile to send cameras to the home matches of sides such as Kano Pillars, El-Kanemi Warriors and Gombe United; and rival clubs claim that one of the reasons that none of those sides lost at home this season is because the absence of footage allows them and referees to get away with particularly outrageous abuses.

Northern clubs retort that their rivals are merely inventing excuses. It is never easy to know who to believe, a fact that the LMC discovered last month when the potential title-decider between Kano Pillars and Enyimba was abandoned following a pitch invasion. Enyimba refused to play on, claiming their players feared for their lives, but Pillars officials protested that their fans had simply been "jubilating" after their team scored a goal and pointed out that the pitch was cleared in under 90 seconds, the threshold at which a points deduction becomes mandatory.

The referees' report suggested officials felt the atmosphere was not safe for play to continue, but Pillars, who had been filming the match themselves, produced footage that appeared to show the referee trying to convince Enyimba players to come back on to the pitch.

Not knowing what to conclude, the LMC ordered the match to be replayed at a neutral venue. Pillars took a giant step to the title by winning 1-0, a "home" victory for which the club rewarded their players with the bonus they normally get for away wins – 40,000 Naira (about £155) – one of just three times all season that the champions earned that bounty.

Source:http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2013/oct/29/nigeria-toughest-league-win-away

how i feel after the fact is irrelevant. my take is she has to have sex with someone else due to serious congi or some justifiable reason, at least she should take my own feelings into account and not do it overtly so that i do not know. on the other hand if she is insensitive enough to do it in our house of with someone close to me then we obviously have no relationship. if u have to cheat, cheat with respect and class; if u have to disrepect me while u ur at it then we have no relationship.

there's a grain of truth to this and a certain aspect(saving habits of males vs females) has been researched in one pakistani study that showed women were generally more financially conservative than men. men are more reckless(bad) but also more competitive(good), an aspect of our species parceled to us from our hunter gathering forbears. maturity doesnt win wars, build empires and innovate fancy things like facebook and nairaland.

Emmadani: When a guy has great confidence in himself,is vry educated/intelligent,a silent-strong guy who listens well and talks less(not talking loudly,not talking non sense,not overeacting),a guy who is always calm and is never intimidated by anytin watsoever,he says the right thing at the right time,very well groomed,he has mastered etiquette,he communicates with ease and has mastered the rules of grammer and undastands the principles of rhetoric and composition,he his well read and has a large vocabulary,he his being well spoken(pronunciation-grammer),he knows how to put whoever he is talking with at ease,he always looks the person he's talking to directly in the eyes,he treats everyone with equal respect and dignity,he his well mannered,he rapports easily with any lady,he stands out from the crowed cos he's got a classy personality.What more can i say....,These kind of guys dnt av any fear in dating any beautiful woman even if he is an average looking guy,instead the so called beautiful women av alot of respect for him and might fall for him easily.Sum beautiful women might even have fear in dating such a guy.

i disagree. it happens but very rare in naija. this will be all very well if such a guy "mostly" finds himself amongst a pool of suave cultured and sophisticated women. this becomes near impossible after college. for the most part women beyong college age cherish security, deep pockets or power over culture and d grammar of shakespeare, shelley and keats. for an intelligent average looking man, na money still sure pass.

off topic, beautiful women in naija rare sha. like 1 in 50 chics meet my not too high bar of wt i consider beautiful. and to be fair to them men no dey try too.all down to poverty, malnutrition and the scorching heat....

I'm a soccer addict. Hate them both. Fifa and Pes have nothing on NFL 2K5 AND NBA 2K13. BEST SPORT FRANCHISES EVER!

a major thrust of ur essay seems to be that increasing the allocation towards education would end most of the problems that bedevil it. i'll say that even if u increased the allocation to 100% politticans and the di.ck heads that make up nigeria's ledaership elite would simply gravitate towards the educational sector with their rent seeking mentality and other well known vices. here's precisely what the lecturers want: to be on the same level with politicians. naija has become this gravy train and every one wants in on the action. if u think about it hard and long enough. all the money allocated to education will not create jobs. what this society need is jobs for its citizensand not too much theory. tertiary education has to be pruned down to size.the ever swelling rank of unemployed graduates who have no jobs post graduation should have convinced everyone by now .

u cant go wrong with a good location and a decent population of under 25s(university, secondary schl). the lounge at ecentre yaba is doing pretty well, knock on wood

I've played virtually every konami soccer game out there since iss and iss deluxe on snes and sega. Bought fifa 13 and pes 13 last year after a brief hiatus from pes 10 and i was flat out disappointed with either game. wack game physics, wack ai systems, annoying cpu controlled teams dont play like their real life counterparts(this has been a major issue for me). eg i'll use wigan and be bossing barcelona in possession..meh( and im just decent). Master league was more fun on ps one and ps2. i play other sports games like nfl and nba and ill say that soccer games have evolved slowly compared to other sports genres.the nba 2k series which isnt perfect blows fifa and pes out of water in my opinion. when u player lakers or heat; 9 out of ten times the teams play in the same way their real life teams play making it more immersive and fun. lebron plays like lebron. kobe plays like kobe etc. the attention to detail is unreal. in socccer games the detail stops at graphics and attributes.
maybe i have unrealistic expectations for these game sims, it just sucks whenever there's a new release and something inside me keeps yearning for the game physics in classic titles like iss pro98, pes2 pes 5 and pes 9. pes 12 was decent too. only fifa game i ever loved was the WC2010 one..

their new plans still leave me feeling underwhelmed. what's the point of increasing speed when they are still rolling out capped plans? just to make us exhaust our plans quicker and shell out more abi? Nothing for a download junkie like me? On cobranet i was downloading nearly 100gigs a month in movies on their monthly plan which makes u browse free between 12am and 6am. its amazing that with a population as big as ours affordable and uncapped internet still isnt a foregone conclusion...

i was in the know that some ex-senator's son would be flying in wizkid and co to perform for him in abuja last saturday. the senator that looted and built one big supermarket like that in wuse. didnt know it would be this big gig at the ICC, thought it was something small for his gf or somtn like that. the guy no need recoup anything. there's more where that's comng from

Underdogg:
I understand that there are super-rich Nigerians out there, but what percentage of the population are they? According to World Bank, about 67% of Nigerians live below the poverty line. If there are so few extremely rich and so many extremely poor, then who can afford all these high end properties? Certainly not the middle class… I happen to be middle class and, having looked around, I get the sinking feeling that I can’t afford to own the kind of housing I believe my family deserves. I’ve been to Lekki (Lagos), Garki (Abuja) or Trans Amadi (PH) and it saddens me to see those houses… actually there… but so unbelievably expensive… and so frustratingly unoccupied. And please don’t tell me about loans or mortgage financing because to me, the available interest rates as at now look like a polite way of asking the low to middle income earners I.e. the general populace, to go to blazes.

At the risk of oversimplifying things i'll offer that a situatin whereby 170m+ citizens only have three or four model city/states in the country( ABJ LAG and PH etc) clearly shows that demand outstrips supply of the kinds of quality locations people desire. If 18 out of our 36 states where as relatively urban, industrialized and sophisticated as the aformentioned three, maybe the situation would not have been so dire. As someone else on this thread already pointed out the real estatate market in naija is elitist. I had a good job by naija's standards but with my salary I couldn't dream of owning a decent three bedroom in my lifetime at a decent location where i work and have my kids attend school in the same area. You also can't look at the real estate problem in naija in isolation to other factors like transportation network, city planning and architecture. If there was a reliable railway grid between Niger and abuja or abuja and kaduna , I could buy a home in suleja and spend 30 to 45 minutes commuting to work by light speed train. A robust transport infrastructure could even out the potential housing shortages that stem from working professionals wanting to concentrate in limited but desirable locations.

biggups to babyosi and every positive person on this thread. im planning for an MS in ocean engineering next fall: massachusets/TX are my top destinations for now. job considerations aside, what cities have the highest proportion of educated black or latino women with nice azzes

meh..not sold. was looking for more insight from a man with barely 24 hours to live. would have to look elsewhere.

dat country america has a way of keeping useful people; if they don't end up as crack heads they'l be goood

need a toyota 2007 corolla sport steering pump. how much does it go for and how long will it take for delivery(in abj)? do u have money back guarantee?

everyone dies. in 20 mins or 83 years...wont matter when u did in a gajillion years from now

is it me or do these ghanian players have big yummy a.sses

does this unlimited plan work on pc/laptop via their modem. Pls wat code do i send, tanx

men and women are wired for variety by nature. men to a larger degree due to our 20 soccer stadia-sized testosterone levels. women, try getting a t-patch and u'll c what i mean. being hor.ny 366 days a year no be small thing o! cultural attitudes don't help either. wats with our naija women forming holy holy tins in bed? give me bj and ur acting like uv neva seen poo in ur life. some of our women are rigid and inflexible. i'll cheat the sorrry stiif asz of a wife 7 days a week. and men witout fame money and power who brag about neva cheating before are a dime a dozen

I don't think the ethiopians were that great. Playing like arsenal of old, all flair but no cutting edge or spine. If they play with same amount of flair and win us in the return leg i'll eat my words. Emenike is an impact player and deserves a big move to a major european league abeg. He is now arguably more influential to the team than MIkel+Moses. I hope he does well in brazil.

goal line tech should have been deployed eons ago but we've always been at the mercy of the slowpokes called fifa. soccer is still behind other competitive sports in many respects:

1. i've been saying this for years but no one will listen. red cards should be reviewed. why punish a whole team for one players transgressions? refs have too much power in this regard and have ruined too many would have been classic games for soccer neutrals who hold no affinity towards any team and simply want sheer entertainment: case in point jans lehmans redcard in the 06 uefa arsenal barca final. That game would have been epic! my suggestion would be to evict the defaulting player, punish him accordingly, and replace with a player on the bench so that the game can continue 11 vs 11. This is done in bball whenever a player is hit with a a double technical or a flagrant foul.

2. Delay tactics can be a foregone conclusion if fifa remove continuous play ( when time continues to count even when there's a major stoppage in play as seen in injuries etc) and replacing it with stop-clock timing( timing stops when play stops) . This would disincentevize players from going down unnecessarily to waste time

3. penalties should be awarded only when a player is hacked down in a one on one situation with the keeper. all those other peripheral incidents incide the box ( hand balls, trips due to physical contact) should be awarded as indirect freekicks.

4. In a contentious decision, the ref should have access to a camera to review the play to equip him with the power to make a fair and unbiased decision. It's very unfair when we blame refs who have to make those split second decisions without the vantage view of replays. eh, this is employed in the NFL.

Soccer is now a high stakes game and the whole point is making the outcome of soccer match as fair as possible. Goal line technology and some of the recomendationss i've made, to my mind, go a long way towards accomplishing that.

optimist D: Hm.they play better than us.

i'll wait till after 180 mins. when lightweight or average teams play, home advantage is usually crucial.

@ prof.femi u keep emphasizing that tertiary education is so important. but i respectfully disagree and assert that within the nigerian context, primary and secondary education should be the priority not tertiary education. we are not an industrialized nation yet! In germany, america and many other industrialized societies, tertiary education flourished in the 18th and 19th century because industrialization created the need for a steady stream of trained employees and research institutions also developed to further the research required by industry/society. What we need is to ramp up the investments at the primary and secondary level in order to have majority of our citizens attain basic quantitative and literacy skills; vocational and technical institutions should be encouraged but they should spring out to serve the needs of industry and not vice versa. we have all these tertiary institutions that end up churning out graduates into an already saturated job market because our institutions are currently serving a non-existent need. All the money in the world dished out to ASUU will not solve the larger problem of job scarcity and lack of industrialization.

few reasons why Nigeria must not go to the world cup.

- The world cup is over rated, even if we won, it won't bring about national unity. Nigeria will stil be divided along religious and tribal lines
- It is an expensive venture for very poor countries. We should focus on more pressing concerns.
- It's a potent vent through which corruption thrives ( NFF is one of the most corrupt institutions in the land, pray tell, what do we need 263
delegates in ethiopia for?)
- The world cup and sports in general have never brought development to any country. Rather, development and industrialization makes it possible for people to luxuriate in other endeavours like literature, the arts, painting, and sports etc.

geeez: Those who have chosen to hate us, question our development, poke fingers at our system of governance and slander our ways of life can continue to do so

Well I have news for them, the more they resent us for developing our land, the more we will give them reasons to resent us


It's in our DNA to develop

We are wired to leave anywhere we find ourselves better than we met it

That's the Yoruba spirit

That's the Odua ingenuity

Yoruba land o ni baje

Shot the fork up, no race or ethnicity has a monopoly on human ingenuity! Do the work and let it speak for itself like all other progresive civilizations have/are doing

this chap was on another thread saying he applies discretion by buying condoms online to avoid doing it in public, now ur here offering an elegant but useless prayer on nairaland to skydaddy who is clearly against fornication. if i were God i'll spit on ur prayer

poor man kitchen

Ike~lips:
Chapter 11

Before i reached Enugu something struck me. We passed a very beautiful lady. She was wearing a beautiful white dress and gold sandals, she looked like an angel. Her dark skin had a glow to it. Normally i go for the light-skinned type but this time i had to make an exception, she was indeed beautiful. I asked the okada man to drive back to her. I had to meet her. We made a U-turn and he stopped the bike just across the street. I crossed over to her. Gave her a warm smile and greeted. He gave back what i believed to be a grimace and dhe quickly looked away. I obviously didn't expect her to be that easy. I had to put in more effort.

" i wanted to know if you knew where the nearest restroom is"
She gave me a straight face and replied, " you are too fancy for using bush but you aren't too fancy using okada abeg shift joor"

This got me a little upset but it didn't make me lose interest in this damsel. I had to get her. Beautiful women like her are hard to find, even though she had a dustbin for a mouth, i believed she was worth the try. I told her that i was looking for a way to strike up a conversation with her. I said that her beauty had mesmerized me, i had to come back and talk to her. She reacted as if this wasn't the first a man has approached her this way. She rolled her eyes and looked away once more and said

" bros its either you buy my garri or my water or you go back to your okada and continue with your journey"
She made a mean face then looked away again. I realized there was on old lady about 15metres away from where we stood who was sitting on a stone and had a couple of fruits, garri and water placed on a stand made by card boxes and bricks. She starred at me then i smiled and waved at her, she gave me a straight face then she looked away, she said something to herself, i was too far to hear it.

i looked at the girl and said, " you grandmother is quite charming"
She looked at me as if she was going to strangle me and said, " that is my moda fool!"
I felt i had messed up this time around. But the woman looked too old to be her mother. But i guess poverty can always make one look older than they really are.

There was a girl i tried tossing a few months back. Her name is Oge she is beautiful, that day she was on her way to a church meeting, she walked past my shop, which is how i noticed her and decided to pursue her. She held her bible and she wore a top that i felt was slightly in appropriate for church. It exposed her bosom a little. I in all honesty believe that women should not wear clothes that show skin or show off their figure when they go to church. It will only distract men from their focus on God to focus on unholy things. Unlike this damsel before me, Oge was very nice and welcoming. She asked about me and what i did.
Then it lead to the very question every born again over religious christian asks. So are you born again? I was hesitant since i wasn't much of a church goer. I only prayed when i left it was convenient for me to pray. I lied that i was born again and she asked me how i got born again. I told her i confessed my sins to christ and i stopped doing bad things. She told me that wasn't all, she started preaching to me and quoted a couple of bible verses, i wasn't really interested in what she was saying. I was more focused on what was under her shirt. When she finished preaching she made me raise my hands in the middle of the road to make some sort of confession. I did. Anyway she looked 23 but she was 17. Lack of good meals had a way of playing with her appearance but she was beautiful regardless.

I wasn't really interested in being born again, if i was born once and I'm not yet dead why should i be born again. For her sake i obeyed her instructions. She asked me to join her in her prayer meeting but i told her i had to go back to my shop to attend to my customers. She took my number and promised to check on me and call me on Sunday to go to church. God forgive me, but if going to church later on led to getting inside her panties i was ready to do it.

I did all she asked me to do, we went to church, prayed. After a month i was genuinely falling for her, i wanted to have ,more than her waist, i wanted her to be my woman, alone, forever .Unfortunately it never happened because she fell pregnant for a rich man in her area. I guess i wasn't rich enough to get into her panties after all. But this married man clearly was. We had been dating for 2months and she a 6 weeks pregnant for him when i found out. I wondered whatever happened to the sweet angelic woman i met, i guess she knew what she was doing when she wore that revealing top the day i met her. I guess i was dealing with the devil in sheep clothing. I had joined prayer groups and for the first time in my life i fasted. I vowed never to trust the holier than thou sisters from church. Just poke and drop her. That was my new motto. I wont be fooled twice.

I apologised to her and said, " im sure she was just as beautiful as you are now when she was younger" she smiled and laughed a little. We spoke for a few more minutes. By this time the okada man was complaining. I gave him an N500 and asked him to give me 5 more minutes and he agreed. Amaka, thats her name, asked me walk her back to her house to get more food items to sell, i agreed to this. We walked into the bush, she said this was a short cut. I told her that i had a garri business and i could partner with her and she could make 20times more than she was making on the street. Moving to a city to do better business excited her. She agreed and promised to tell her mother about the proposal.
As we were walking its like my ancestors heard my prayer, her dress got hooked my a tree branch, the branch pulled her back, she lost her balance and fell. The dress remained on the branched. Behold, before me laid a beautiful damsel wit soft bare breasts. I didn't know whether to get the torn piece if clothing off the branch to cover up or to just keep staring at her naked body until she got it the remaining cloth to cover herself up

;DOk i'm jobless and i pulled this one out of your old posts.
So you could sit down and compose a decent story as this one, yet you want me/us to believe the tales by moonlight you posted here. Keep polishing your trolling skills