The chief executive officer of Monimichelle, Africa’s leading stadium construction outfit, Ebi Egbe has given his take on the renovation of Abuja National Stadium and the Lagos National Stadium Surulere respectively with the aim to change the face of Nigerian football pitches and promote good football.
Egbe posited concerning both stadiums: “Well the truth of the matter is that the Abuja National Stadium is a class one Stadium, so we can’t, I will not allow the government to install a hybrid pitch in the National Stadium Abuja because it’s a class one certified athletic stadium which means we must go for natural turf, but it must be a top natural turf.”
“You know how tough it is to maintain natural grass, no matter how much we spend, after some time, we will start to have issues because to do natural grass, even the water must be treated. You have to get the right equipment, maintenance equipment for natural grass pitch. But the fact that it is an athletic stadium where they will be throwing the javelin and all those things, it might not just last.”
“That’s why I want to advise the government that Abuja National stadium can be an athletic stadium and Lake Lagos National stadium Surulere can be a football stadium but the Abuja National stadium being a natural grass pitch and Lagos National Stadium and hybrid synthetic stadium, that’s my advice, I don’t know if they will take it. When we make the Lagos National stadium a football stadium, we go for top-grade hybrid grass one at the Real Madrid stadium done by Misto, the same grass on Madrid pitch, we can bring the Bernabeu grass to National stadium Lagos.”
“I represent Misto in the whole of Africa, I have a close connection with them and a good working relationship for almost 10, 12 years now. So when we install this two pitches in our national stadium, on the natural grass pitch in Abuja, only play 1-2 hours a week, the pitch is only going to be used for match days, on the full hybrid pitch for national stadium Lagos, we can play up to 4 hours on that pitch.
Our main concern should now be the training pitches because we need pitches that will absorb training sessions. My take is for sustainability, we need to be able to install sustainable pitches, I would now recommend that we do the hybrid synthetic pitch for the practice pitches in Lagos and the same hybrid synthetic turf for Abuja national stadium.
The reason for that is because the difference between the natural grass and hybrid synthetic pitch is that the ball moves faster 100% on hybrid synthetic grass than on natural grass, that’s for Abuja national stadium.”
“Now for Lagos National stadium, the hybrid to be installed on the national stadium in Surulere if they take my advice will now go for hybrid synthetic pitches for the practice pitches in National Stadium Surulere because those pitches are seriously undulated.
They have the same ball behavior with the main bowl pitch, zero abrasion, foot comfortability is the same, when I invest on hybrid pitches for our practice pitches to sustain the pressure, which means that we are only going to be using Abuja National Stadium one to two hours in a week just to play a game, the same thing with the Lagos National Stadium, we can only use for three to four hours for our National team.
So there is not going to be a training session in the main bowls, we are going to have practice centers in Abuja and Lagos, there is going to be hybrid synthetic because it can absorb training traffic and then when the go-to play in the main bowl pitch, the ball behaves on both synthetic and main bowl pitch are very similar, it’s very technical, that’s my advice for Nigeria because it’s high time we bring our National teams home,” he explained.
