She`s Nigerian, but Lebanese by origin and a football star in a conservative country`s even more conservative north. Hidaa Ghaddar is unconventional — but her approach might be just what`s needed in a city buckling under the weight of drug abuse and unemployment. Ghaddar`s athletic academy aims to keep youth off drugs in football-crazy Kano, the cultural capital of Muslim-majority northern Nigeria.
“Drug abuse and playing football don`t go together. It`s either you do this or that,” she told AFP of her Breakthrough Football Academy, established two years ago, which also aims to develop future talent for foreign clubs. The 27-year-old has become something of a local celebrity as the country`s only woman coach of an all-male team, defying cultural norms in Kano. She`s more than qualified for the sporting aspect of her job, but her approach also aims to help Nigerian anti-drug authorities, who are facing a toxic mix of substance abuse, criminality and political violence.
Kano, the largest city in northern Nigeria, has the second highest drug use rate in the country, according to the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency. High unemployment has pushed youths in the city of five million into drugs and crime, and politicians are known to take advantage of the crisis by hiring them as thugs to intimidate opponents, political researchers have documented.
Officially, the state`s unemployment rate is 7.6 percent, above the national average of 5.3 percent. But the number of Kano state youths not in education, employment or training shoots up to 12.5 percent. Another 15.8 percent of residents report being under-employed. Police have started asking residents to report drug peddlers in their communities as part of efforts to contain the problem, alongside a new task force. Nigeria severely lacks treatment and rehabilitation centres and drugs smuggled en route to Europe are increasingly spilling into the local market. “Playing football itself helps these players avoid all of this,” Ghaddar said.
Training sessions are accompanied by a focus on “nutrition, sleep, hydration and having a good lifestyle,” Ghaddar said, from the sidelines of a sandy pitch in the centre of a horse racing track. Several dozen spectators stood are watching the team train in the hot afternoon sun, as Ghaddar sported a black hijab and blue football boots.
Love of football
Born to a Lebanese family of factory owners in Kano — the city is home to a sizeable Lebanesecommunity, mostly engaged in construction, trade and confectionery — Ghaddar started playing football at the age of five. She was gripped by a love of football at 16 when she moved to Lebanon for her university studies. Ghaddar`s dreams of becoming a star on the pitch were cut short by four successive knee injuries and five surgeries, which forced her to abandon her playing career at the age of 18. But she returned to Nigeria to give young players the footballing opportunity she missed. “I lived for 16 years here in Kano and it felt like home,”
Ghaddar said. Initially, she had doubts her plan for an academy would work, considering there were no women footballers of note in the city, where cultural norms steer most women away from sport. But she opened the academy with six students and soon it increased to 63. “I was scared of everything… me being a female wearing a hijab, coming to the race course, training here on sand in front of men,” Ghaddar said with a smile. She provides the players with soccer kits and allowances in an effort to help them concentrate on football. The players are also enrolled in secondary schools and twice-a-week English classes to help their academic growth.
Those not interested in university are employed in her family-owned confectionary and soda factories while they also focus on football. “The boys are family to me, I feel all the positive emotions when I`m with them,” Ghaddar said. Ali Mustapha Ahmad Musa is one of Ghaddar`s students who aspires to become an international football player.
“We pray and train to achieve our highest dream of joining foreign clubs in Europe or elsewhere,” the 15-year old said after a training session. That`s also Ghaddar`s hope. “My dream is to see one of my players playing abroad,” Ghaddar said
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