By Amaechi Agbo

After months of intrigues saturated with several postponement of AGM and conducting two different draws for same league, the Nigeria National League, NNL, will finally start today, April 10th 2019, Amaechi Agbo, Bestchoicesports.com.ng Editor, writes

First, the “most important” league in the country was initially scheduled to kick off on Wednesday, April 3, 2019 but following a meeting of the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF Football Committee which directed that the league’s commencement should be delayed by a week, the earlier kick off date was put on hold.

This, the committee noted was to allow the management of the NNL to do another draw that would change the initial format of two groups in each zones of Northern and Southern Conferences to be expanded to four groups each. NNL complied with the directive and on Friday carries out another draw that led to today’s eventual kick off of the league.

A total of forty-two (42) clubs are participating in the 2018/2019 NNL season. The clubs, for ease of convenience, weee broken down into two (2) conferences of Northern and Southern zones

Each conference is further paired in four different groups. The Northern Conference has the ‘Group A’ whereas the Southern Conference has ‘Group B’

At the Northern Conference, the clubs are paired into Groups A1, A2, A3, and A4

The Southern Conference has Groups B1, B2, B3, and B4.

According to draws made on Friday, some groups have 5 teams while some have 6 teams. This marks the least number of clubs in divisions in the history of NNL. And it is based on this that some clubs will not play today in the league’s matchday one.

At the end of the group matches, each group winner qualifiers for the Super 8 play off, this will see Winner A1 take on A2 and Winner A3 battle A4 in the Northern Conference

In the Southern Conference, winners B1 will take on B2 just as
winners B3 and B4 will slug it out to determine the Top Four teams that will gain promotion to the Nigeria Professional Football League, NPFL.

Those who win the play off qualify for the four NNL slots in the Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL).

The four NPFL ticket winners will also play in a Super Four in Asaba, Delta State at the Stephen Keshi Stadium to determine overall champion of NNL for the season.