NIGERIAN FOOTBALL: CAN WE BEGIN MOURNING?

Prof Adedoja...which way?

If you do not have sack clothes, can you proceed to buy, borrow or better still, steal. Yes, steal. If you must steal for our national interest please do. It’s time to mourn for Nigerian football! Be unconsolable. Use your tears to write on the placard that the game is sick. Please ask for euthanasia for the game. The aches and pains are overbearing and becoming unbearable.

The nurses given the “illegal” mandate to tend the wounds sustained by the game are feeding it with poison! They are importing strange rules to the ethics of managing such ailments. Rather than treat the diagnosed dis-eases they are busy haggling over how much will be paid by the patient and how it will be looted.

ANYASI AND MUAZU: Two men, Enyimba of Aba FC Chairman, Chief Felix Anyansi Agwu and The NFA’s Referees Committee chairman, Suleiman Muazu should be told in plain words the implication of the sack of NPL Chairman by the Executive Committee of the NFA in which they sat and took the decision. Their integrities have been tainted. The only and the best way out for them is, in my own myopic opinion, RESIGN from the NFA. They have lost the basis to remain on board.

Both men served on the NPL electoral committee whose processes brought in Davidson Owumi. Both men sat on the Executive Committee of the NFA led by Aminu Maigari that practically rubbished whatever they did in the NPL. What integrity is left in them?

LEAGUE BOARDS ELECTIONS: Is it thst the members of the Executive Committee of the NFA did not go to school or that they are simply blinded by the superior force outside the NFA remote controlling them?

I needed to ask this question in the face of the crass disregard for the same Statutes that brought them into office, which is supposed to guide them in all their conducts. These personae are employing powers outside the NFA statutes and is not in clear conformity with several FIFA letters nor the FIFA Standard Statutes (FSS) which caused the NPL crises. Where did the NFA get the powers to arrogate to themselves to organise the nomination and electoral process of the representatives of the Amateur, Women and Professional leagues?

Let it be said that the decision to sell forms for this purpose amounts to stealing. To organise the screening and election of anyone into any of these boards is simply thievery and illegal. It is not in tandem with NFA, CAF and FIFA rules. So where did they derive the powers from?

PROFESSOR TAOHEED ADEDOJA: I have formed the penchance of writing the last three of his predecessors as Sports Minister/Chairman of the NSC to warn them what to expect when they get to the office. For this minister, my spirit refused to write. Why, I don’t know.

Ibrahim Isa bio, his immediate past colleague, is definitely a genuinely good man whose intentions are clearly of good. He was consumed and confused with the fraud in Nigerian football. He was not helped by a bureaucratic NSC that is not used to being decisive on any matter!

With four months, does Prof Adedoja want to join the list of journeymen that passed through that ministry as ministers and before batting an eyelid can be forgotten to the cols of history?

Methinks all he needs to do is be like a soldier.

(1)    Ask the NFA, to bring to fore in black and white where they derived the power to set up the Prof. Ibidapo-Obe panel; If they have such powers in the statutes, uphold the decision on Owumi. If not quash immediately the decision;

(2)    Induct before the end of January 2011 the process, selection and appointment of an experienced administrator as the Secretary General;

(3)    By February 2011, cause the NFA to face squarely its primary duty of enduring development plans for the game in Nigeria, including the standardization o all football academies in the nation.

Anything short of this, fellow compatriots, can we begin to sing the NuncDimitis. Mourn and mourn endlessly. The end is here for our football.