NIGERIAN FOOTBALL: RETURN TO STATUS QUO ANTE

 

ADAMU’S PEACE MOVES:

When I read of the peace moves of Dr Amos Adamu, I sighed. I looked backwards to what I have always known of the man and concluded inside me that, “as it is becoming usual, Nigeria will sooner or later find herself in another mess.” To trust the man is to sign to commit suicide.

Shocked? Claims on FIFA as pocket material?

Check on our streets, you will appreciate the fact that we are a people habituated to crises and conflicts even in our everyday life and living. Nigeria has been threatened by a cabal who think they own our football, who boasts to anyone who bother to hear that FIFA is in their pocket. They have made so much money from our football. They are not ready to give away the goose that lays the eggs.

Think of the FIFA suspension which was hurriedly lifted last Friday. We do not have to be linguists to know that the statement announcing the ban clamped on Nigeria came from FIFA’s headquarters in Zurich, the hands that actually wrote out the statement was of a Nigerian architecture.

Let’s go to the election conflict. A matter was taken to court. An injunction was given. The NFA goons prodded on by Dr Adamu pretended there was no injunction. They mounted hurdles preventing the injunction from being served. The Federal High Court Lagos post election met and gave a judgement that rightfully declared that the purported election that ought not have held in the first place is illegal, null and void. She nullified the election. from my lay understanding of Nigerian court system and law, not even that court can overrule itself. Only the Court of Appeal can so over rule.

Effectively and efficiently, in the eyes of the law, that election is gone forever. The congress that was assumed to have also been elected is gone. For that court to have ruled that the most senior officer take charge of the NFA is what parties are supposed to help the court to appropriately locate by returning the elected body existing in law as at the time that she gave the last judgement.

NIGERIA, A LAUGHING STOCK:

I heard that the Presidency was so peeved by the schemes. A call was said to have been put to Dr Amos Adamu advising him to go and resign his positions in CAF and FIFA. In 72 hours, so many events were fixed including a meeting with Harrison Jalla over withdrawing the case in court.

Nigeria was unbanned within hours giving credence to the fact that FIFA is in one of his pockets. For those who know the implications, Nigeria has become the laughing stock of the international community.

Their sense of folly was unraveled when they briefed their reporter friends, especially, the www.mtnfootball.com that is becoming so popular for such myopic reports celebrating the return of the last board led by Alhaji Aminu Maigari.

They faulted. They are so desirous and determined to pull down the entire structure of Nigerian football on everyone including themselves if they cannot have their way. They lie and profess that they love Nigerian football. They easily tell us how much they love Nigeria more than Goodluck Jonathan.

ROOT OF THE CURRENT CRISES:

The present crisis manufactured and donated to Nigeria and Nigerians goes beyond the unformulated FIFA conception of interference of third parties in the affairs of a football federation. I swear that it is not about whether Harrison Jalla of the National Association of Nigerian Footballers (NANF) had gone to the Federal High Court or whether he should have gone to the Court of Arbitration of Sports (CAS) in Switzerland in order to force the leadership of the Nigeria Football Association (NFA), to do what is right, equitable, fair, just, fit and proper.

I believe that if justice must have its true face and price, the first of all further settlements that Jalla’s NANF must insist and agree is, the judgement of the FHC in Lagos on the election MUST STAND. It is that the Aminu Maigari last board is not known to Nigerian law and by extension, the Nigerian government and people.

Secondly, we need new statutes for football administration which has to further democratize the football space to attract the necessary, right thinking and business-minded Nigerians into the administration of the game in Nigeria. No wonder they were asking for SWAN, NAPHER, players’ union representation.

In other words, the NFA board in place before the election which has been nullified has to be returned. Since the Congress post-election is a core issue of dispute which included part of what Chief Olusegun Odegbami took to the CAS in Switzerland, and given that we also know that FIFA will not take a caretaker nor deal with an interim arrangement, it is that Aminu Maigari board before the nullified election that has to be returned.

SOURCE OF THE ENTIRE CRISES

The entire conflict, from its generic root, is really about doing what is right, reasonable, fair, just and equitable. In any organization or group of people, once you are not guided by the principles of equity, fairplay and justice it is obvious that you are calling for trouble. In any institution where aggrieved members CANNOT have a fair media of ventilating their grievances, you are only calling people to resort to the use of violence. Without the troika of equity, fairplay and justice, society degenerates into a Hobbesian state of anarchy where life becomes short and brutish. The present conflict in Nigerian football is a cumulative product of several decades of injustice suffered by the stakeholders. This is a rare opportunity to resolve these issues now. If we all fail to resolve the issues, we all will pay dearly for it. MARK MY WORDS.