Majority of speakers at the maiden Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) Twitter Space tipped Victor Mbaoma of Enyimba International to emerge the highest goals scorer at the end of the 2021/22 season.
Mbaoma, with 15 goals after MatchDay 33, is locked with three others in the race for the Golden Boot. But it is Rivers United’s Chijioke Akuneto who leads the pack with 16 goals, while Gombe United’s Abdulaziz Yusuf is tied with Mbaoma at 15 goals and Ishaq Rafiu of Rivers United completes the four man race at 14 goals.
Tagged, “The Race for the Golden Boot”, the one hour live twitter speak-in event had a total of 328 tweet handles tuned and was anchored by Andrew Randa. Experienced NPFL data miner, George Akpayen was the co-host.
The speakers from across the country included Fisayo Dairo (Port Harcourt); Kaduna’s Mohammed Yusuf Suleiman (well known as Mr Mowiz); Samuel Tobi, also known as Oganla (Lagos); Sanipe Damieti (otherwise called Dtontes (Port Harcourt); Anthony Ademodi (Aba); popular radio football commentator, Emmanuel Etim (Lagos), Alfred Okoligwe (Lagos), Ayobami Animasahun (Ibadan) and UK-based Channels TV sports presenter, Austin Okon Akpan.
Those who tipped Mbaoma to top the goal scoring chart made reference to the remaining five fixtures of the contending players’ clubs and concluded that the Enyimba striker has a more favourable path to score more goals. Enyimba’s opponents in the last five games include ties against relegation candidates, MFM, Heartland and Dakkada. Mbaoma joined the goal hunters race late but hit a hat-trick in the last home game against Kwara United at Aba, netting all goals in the 3-0 win.
Though Akuneto leads with 16 goals, the pundits believed he has more tricky fixtures to wade through starting with away game in Awka against third place contender, Rangers on Sunday.
While thanking the participants, Special Projects Director at the League Management Company, Harry Iwuala noted that the Twitter Space event would become a steady staple to feed the information yearnings of followers of the NPFL.
“We are impressed with the turn out at this maiden event and it has shown that there’s a lot we can do to share the positives of the league through all available media platforms and we will be exploring all channels to take the league to the people,” Iwuala noted.
