A Hat-Trick In The NPFL, And You Probably Did Not Hear About It

Sports

Kaduna · Friday 11 September 2026

Mohammed Rabiu Zulkifilu of Ranchers Bees leads the early NPFL scoring race after a hat-trick, with Kano Pillars defender Fabian Nworie and Doma United forward Sadiq Rilwan close behind. Matchday three fixtures have been confirmed.

A defender in the top three of a scoring chart is unusual enough to be worth a sentence on its own.

football stadium crowd african league match Photograph by James Kirkup via Unsplash.

The attention gap, stated plainly

Event	Nigerian coverage
A Nigerian scores in the Premier League	Wall to wall
A Nigerian scores in the Saudi Pro League	Substantial
A hat-trick in the NPFL	Two outlets

All three are Nigerian players scoring goals.

This story ran on Complete Sports and Dailysports. The Osimhen fitness update ran everywhere. Both are legitimate news. The ratio is the thing worth noticing, because the league getting the least attention is the one that produces the players.

Why it matters beyond fairness

Scouting follows coverage. A striker scoring freely in a league nobody writes about is harder for an agent to sell, harder for a European club to justify watching, and easier for a national team to overlook. Coverage is not decoration, it is part of the transfer mechanism.

What the NPFL already has. Fixtures, kick-off times, stadiums and a scoring chart, published and available. The information exists. The audience has been trained elsewhere.

Nigeria exports footballers and imports football coverage. The league in the middle gets neither.

The honest counter-argument

Audiences follow quality and reliability, and the NPFL has had genuine problems with both, including fixtures that move and results that get disputed. Coverage will not fix a league that cannot guarantee a kick-off time.

Matchday three has confirmed times and stadiums. That is the precondition. What comes next is somebody deciding the hat-trick is worth a headline.

Reporting: Complete Sports and Dailysports.

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