History
The league was founded in 1972 with six teams. On Saturday 12 May 1990 at the Onikan Stadium Lagos, the league was rechristened the "Professional League" with a goal to modernize the game and make clubs self-sufficient. Decrees 10 and 11 which codified the introduction of professional football in Nigeria stipulated that professional clubs should be run as limited liability companies each governed by a regularly constituted board of directors and required to hold annual general meetings, present independently audited accounts, cultivate youth/feeder teams and own their own stadium within five years of registration with the Pro League Department. To assist Pro League clubs in the timely achievement of these stated goals, all 56 professional club-sides that constituted the inaugural Pro League First and Second Division were granted a five-year tax moratorium on all income starting from 1990.
From 1999-2007, there was an end of season Championship called the "Super Four". The top four teams would play a round-robin mini-league at a neutral site to determine the league champion. The Super Four is now a pre-season tournament featuring the top four teams of the prior year.
After the 2006 competition, the league changed its calendar to more closely match the common European regular season structure (starting around August and ending around May). The Premier League is managed by the Nigeria Professional League Board.
Read more about this topic: Nigeria Premier League
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“We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. However, the two sides are not to be divided off; as long as men exist the history of nature and the history of men are mutually conditioned.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“The history is always the same the product is always different and the history interests more than the product. More, that is, more. Yes. But if the product was not different the history which is the same would not be more interesting.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)