The skeleton in NFF’s cupboard
Following the aborted congress which threw up Chris Giwa as President of the Nigeria Football Federation and the counter congress in Warri under which Amaju Pinnick became the FIFA-recongnised NFF president, a circus show has been going on.
Pinnick and Giwa Both sides have been going in and out of court rooms to lay claim to the juicy Board of the football federation but forgot that a fight existed between the League Management Company and Total Promotions over both the title rights and the television rights ownership. Following the removal of Chief Rumson Baribote as Chairman of the Nigeria Premier Football League, crisis engulfed the league. When journalist turned politician, Bolaji Abdullahi was appointed as sports minister, he began moves to reconcile the football body.
He, with the support of the Alhaji Aminu Maigari-led NFF Board floated the Interim Management Committee to manage the league for a period of at least one year, after which a new election would be held for a new board. After one year when the club owners did not see any sign of the committee handing the league back to them, they started kicking. At this stage some stakeholders went to an Abuja High Court which ruled the NFF and the NPL illegal. It was to avoid this legal battle that the Interim Committee went to the Corporate Affairs Commission to register the league as a company which they called League Management Company with 60 per cent shares purportedly held by the chairman in trust for the club owners. With the LMC, Aminu Maigari, who as President of the NFF was to, surprisingly hold some shares in trust for the Nigeria Football Association, why NFA?
Because the NFF had been declared illegal by the Abuja High Court. But Maigari forgot that the same NFF, in an attempt to change its name after formulation of a statute which gives them total control of football outside the government, had sworn to an affidavit that they have nothing to do with the NFA and that the NFF was a private organisation which only enjoys grants from government. With this loophole, those that lost out to the Sani Lulu group with Jarret Tenabe at the head, seized the opportunity to say that they were the NFA, the only body recognised by law via the Decree 101 which was and is yet to be abrogated. The declaration by the NFF that they were a private organisation almost cost football support from the government. The Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice had to write the National Sports Commission, advising it to stop paying subvention to the NFF. When it became hard for the NFF to get fund to run their programmes, they sent emissaries to beg then DG of the sports commission, Chief Patrick Ekeji, himself a former national player who didn’t want the game to suffer. Chief Ekeji found a way out after consulting with the authorities and that was how the football body was NFF in the eyes of the ordinary Nigerian and FIFA but went to government as NFA to collect money with which they bankrolled their activities. That is how it is till date. That is the skeleton in the cupboard of both the NFF and its league managers, the LMC. After the LMC was incorporated, it started having problem with Total Promotions, an organisation that owned both the title rights and television rights and also funded the activities of the NPFL when it had problems of sponsorship. LMC wanted to hand over the league to a sponsor but Total Promotions, which had been in court over the league sponsorship, vowed to join any company which intended to take up the NPFL title rights in a 2014 law suit still before the High Court in Lagos. Apart from the title rights, the LMC managers also frowned at the ‘profit’ Total Promotions were making on the television rights which they (LMC) claimed the company procured for peanuts. The LMC was not bothered about the risk Total Promotions took in putting its money in a league that most Nigerians described as almost valueless at the time but it now sees it as a rip off after Super Sports came in with big money. I was not surprised therefore when the Chris Giwa group, want to resurrect the battle between the LMC and Total Promotions by writing to the headquarters of Super Sports in South Africa to stop doing business with the LMC or risk a legal battle. I took up this matter with my colleague and Super Sports West Africa Regional Manager, Felix Awogu and he wrote thus: “I think it is time to let our football move forward, there is only one Football Federation recognised by FIFA, CAF and the federal government which guaranteed our multi-billion Naira investment in Nigerian football and as you know we are the only (ones) sustaining the local football industry and I think it’s time for government (to) acknowledge our commitment and investment in sports.” Because the NFF and LMC wanted to run away from legal battle the NPFL had and Maigari presented himself as holding some shares of the LMC in trust for the NFA and not NFF, they have thus left a loophole for opponents to feast on. In 2006, a group of people, including some members of the present NFF Board, conspired to remove Alhaji Ibrahim Galadima as NFA Chairman, hiding under the cover that the Super Eagles failed to qualify for the 2016 World Cup. Ten years after, they have also failed to qualify the Super Eagles back to back for the lesser competition, the Africa Nations Cup in 2015 and 2017 and are not even sure of qualifying the team for the 2018 World Cup, with the haphazard way they are going about the appointment of a substantive coach for the team. The NFF are battling the Giwa group over leadership now but if and when Total Promotions join with their suit, who knows if they would be able to concentrate to deliver for the teeming Nigerian football fans, to whom football is like a religion. - Vanguard
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