WHAT IS THE PROBLEM WITH SEGUN ODEGBAMI?

Aminu Maigari...Nigeria

A reporter himself a Yoruba like Olusegun Odegbami hurled at me, “Yoruba people are the problems of this country. What else do you and Odegbami and your ilks want again? Why can’t you accept that God has designed Maigari to be the President of the NFF?”

That was on the 19^th November 2010. I looked at the colleague (name withheld) with serious sympathy. I was tempted not to make comment. I was prodded by the people present to “say something if only for the records”.

I then replied, I sent an e-mail to egbon (Odegbami) when I heard he was running for the NFA President’s seat. I charged at him, “You are not known to finish a task you start” and gave him four separate instances. He replied me. He explained and promised this time won’t be the same.

The Court of Appeal heard, listened and reasoned with Adams Oshiomhole, Dr Fayemi and Engineer Rauf Aregbesola. One strand common to them is, they did not surrender because they had a belief they pursued.

Now, see anything that looked semblant between those politicians and Odegbami? Is Odegbami’s case in the Court of Arbitration in Sports (CAS) FIFA-compliant? Does he have a case to seek interpretation? Is he resolute and determined to do what is right? These leadership values and questions are they for his personal gains? No.

When I finished asking these questions we all had same answers but the thing our friend wanted was, let’s leave issues as they are and go on with Maigari. We disagreed. I raised some issues on the matter Harrison Jalla and NANF took to the Federal High Court, Lagos but rested the case.

WHO IS JITI OGUNYE?

A top sports editor caught a posting of the new court case on my facebook and sent me a terse text message, WHO IS JITI OGUNYE? I laughed myself hoarse. An editor who never heard this name. was he in Nigeria during the anti-democratic struggles that brought about this democracy? That is an aside.

A senior colleague sent me the 68-page document Jiti, a lawyer, took to court to ask for some interpretations on issues we had raised, on issues some big guns in the industry had ‘begged’ some of us now tagged as SPORTS TALIBANS to please leave the matters.

It is sad that someone outside of the football or sports family had to seek the defence of the sanctity of the courts and the judiciary. What Jiti has done which he probably does not realize is that he is helping us to fix some problems we had conspired to keep low because we want to go on with things as they are now.

BETWEEN ODEGBAMI AND JALLA:

Both men played football. Their goals in the NFA election are similar. They pursued same through the courts. One went to a civil court and the other went to a court known to FIFA. Jalla’s was like the ‘African insurance’ local, quicker and fiery. He was called and begged. An out of court settlement was reached after the court had given so much orders which the other parties ordinarily can contest but slept on their rights to contest until it became statute barred.

Pronto! Some sports journalists went to town that he was given a two digit million Naira tip to cooperate. Uhm! I sighed when I heard. I pitied Jalla.

Now, ask, what happened to the terms that led to the out of court settlement? Have parties been responsible and respectful of the terms? Jalla, come out and talk.

Back to Odegbami. His is like the Christian prayer, slow, time consuming, assuring but not fiery. When the out of court settlement with Jalla was designed, it did not have Odegbami in the picture probably because he has no court binding orders like Jalla.

Post war, Odegbami was named in a committee of the NFA without prior consultation. Nobody named in any of the committees were consulted. Though, many of the committee nominees lobbied for the appointment. Questions arose, were those named in the committees the best human resources available to our football? No. It was rather job for the hungry. (More on this in days. Watch out).

BETWEEN MAIGARI AND JORDAN:

Danny Jordan...South Afric

The same FIFA rules and regulations for elections are expected to have produced these two men. Maigari in Nigeria. Jordan in South Africa. They are the faces of football in both nations. It is assumed they are the best of both nation’s football human resource.

Compare and contrast. What results do you get? One does not know how many teams play in his country’s league neither does he know the difference between a defendant and a plaintiff in a law suit involving him.

The other is a global brand and a compendium of football. A fine breed whose totality is the game. Brilliant like a lawyer, suave like a politician. 150million Nigerians as against 50million South Africans. Purport? In a free and fair election, I think Maigari will not vote for himself. Secondly, if Barrister Abdulhamid Mustapha will conduct the election in SAFA (which produced Jordan), supervised by a VOTE-FOR-CASH FIFA, Jordan will not get a single vote. Instead, he will be offered membership of a committee!

IBRAHIM GALADIMA:

I heard that when the well deserved nomination of former NFA Chairman, amiable Ibrahim Galadima got to Cairo, the CAF headquarters, our own Dr Amos Adamu, Slim Aloulou and the Malian Diakite were together. They went on a laughing tour and promised, Galadima and Nigeria will get only one vote, which is the one she will give herself.

Instantly, they started to work for Benin Republic and Ghana. For Ghana, they rejected Abedi Pele because “he is stubborn”. Another candidate is raised. For Benin Republic, their ilk, Dr Bolaji Ojo-Oba, (who has a dual citizenship of Nigeria and Benin Republic) is making up for the other candidate.

Ask, Nigerians working in concert with foreigners to defeat Nigeria in the international scene. I asked a Policeman what offence that is, he did not think twice and said, “threat to the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Felony, and coup plotting”.

Must we wait until we lose this fight? Sports Minister Issa Ibrahim Bio must be woken to understand this is the National Interest of Nigeria that is under threat from his window. He must raise soldiers to go to war, fight and secure the victory of this nation. I rest this case until after the battle.

THE NEW HEADMASTER AT THE GLASS HOUSE

Aminu Maigari...NFA Boss

I have had the privilege to have been reporting football for 22 of my 25+ years as a sports journalist. I have also been reporting the Nigeria Football Association (NFA) since their days in Adeniran Ogunsanya in Surulere in Lagos when Simon Kolawole, my then editor in TempoSports due to his conviction that every reporter must have a taste and knowledge of the beats in the sports desk threw me to cover the NFA.                  

Years later, I can recall when one modest, quiet but friendly youngman called Musa Amadu, a lawyer joined the employ of the federation. He rose through the ranks. I must also admit that I met him at close range for the first time during the 2010 World Cup qualifiers. How?

We wrote the NFA proposing to raise in three months N2.5b for the second round campaign of the qualifiers. We were invited for a meeting. Our team of three including FIFA agent, Emmanuel Omijeh and Professor Seun Omotayo met with Amadu. He brought in one Adama, head of (ambush) marketing. At the end of the friendly event, we were asked to give them the Business & Strategic Plan. We did having confidence in them. We waited for the reply          which never came till date.

Weeks later, Afribank Plc having signed an agreement with the NFA and paid them N250m needed a sports consultant to help them interpret and drive the project they had with the NFA. When I was invited, I demanded for the letter from the NFA to understand my tasks properly. When I read same, it sounded stricta as if I was writing because I was too familiar with the language.

It did not take me long to know that the submission we gave the NFA had been plagiarised and used to steal Afribank’s hard earned money. I instantly withdrew my interest to help the bank and proceeded to raise the intellectual property stealing allegations against the NFA.

MAKING OF THE HEADMASTER:

When the crises and re-organisation in the NFA started taking shape, Dr Bolaji Ojo-Oba, the then secretary general, was sacked. Strong elements argued for the minister, Isa Ibrahim Bio, a very listening administrator, who listened to the voice of reason and wisdom to appoint within the institution an acting secretary general. The rationale was that it should motivate staffers to aspire to rise to the pinnacle of the organisation where they work. This brought Amadu in as the acting secretary general.

Reports reaching yours faithfully which I personally experienced showed that the office has probably ran into the man. He is certainly changed. He now picks which human beings he answers their greetings. Even journalists who cover the NFA complain so badly against him. He wants everybody to cower before him.

Uhm! How time changes man? If he becomes the substantive secretary general, which he is seriously lobbying for, he most likely will be the most dictatorial accounting officer. He will decide who plays the ball on the pitch or and who can even speak on football.

But with the stigma of being a “Dr Amos Adamu boy” what happens?

All hail the new headmaster!

SUPER FALCONS LOST TO NFF NOT GERMANY

Sports anywhere in the real advanced world is a science. It is not voodoo. Sports is not left to chances again. The quality of management structures you put in place will to a most larger extent determine the quality of results you will get.
I insist that the Super Falcons that lost yesterday by eight whooping goals did not lose to Germany. They rather lost to the Lugardian technology of football management in the Glass House.
I recall with vivid clarity that the backroom technical staffers in my former club, Zamalek SC of Egypt, upon the fixture of any match, whether friendly or competitive, from the day the match is settled will be played would have set out to know every inch of detail about the opponents, players, technical staffers, community, weather, pitch, film clips of opponents’ previous games etc These are called RECONNAISSANCE DATA.
Even with a confused NFA as it is now, there surely are no such prior information available to the team that went to play Germany in Leverkusen. We went into the game blindly. I am so sure our FA officials did not know whether the girls would be playing on artificial or grass pitch. The Nigerian girls probably trained on grass whereas the match was on the artificial pitch.
I can swear that our FA officials are not aware that the boots used to play on an artificial pitch IS NOT the same that is used on a grass pitch. With the possibility of knowing the weather in Leverkusen by this time of the year should be very cold made the girls to train in humid Abuja. They played under 3 degrees.
Before the girls would understand what befell them, they were 4-0 down and one added before half time. I saw the trend less than three minutes after the game started. I presaged they were going to be down by 5-0 in the first half.
Skill for skill, talent for talent and football knowledge in tandem, the German girls were not superior to the Nigerians.
Did we not behave like the Boubons of France now? Nigeria lost 5-0 to the Les Fennecs (The Desert Foxes) Algeria in Annaba in a World Cup qualifier. The Algerians know it will be pretty difficult beating the much talents Nigerian team. Our minds were set for the grass pitch Stade 5 Juillet 1962 in Algiers. They dragged us to Annaba where they had an artificial pitch. They made us played in the cold at night under flood lights. We were flogged.
Compare that scenario to this. Any difference? Now ask, which single individual was in the employ of the NFA then who is still there today to know and point these things. We keep changing our key technical men in the NFA every four years. The last time I was in the Confederation of African Handball (CAHB) headquarters in Cairo, about five of the staffers still know and identified me as a former Nigerian player whereas, that same year, about four months before I went on the Cairo trip, I was in the Handball Federation of Nigeria (HFN) secretariat in Lagos and none of them know me by face lest my name of my records. This was Nigeria I played for 20 years vis-à-vis Egypt I played in for two years!
Catch my drift!

NIGERIA AND HISTORY OF EIGHT GOALS:
DATELINE is Kaduna 18th October 1998. It was the inaugural African Women's Football Championship (AWC). Nigeria trounced Morocco 8-0 and Democratic Congo Republic beat Egypt 4-1. The Nigerian team dominated the match from the very beginning with Nkiru Okosieme opening the scoring in the 17th minute.
Patience Avre made it 2-0 for the host team in the 30th minute and Okosieme scored again just before the interval. The second half saw the host team enjoying greater advantage. Rita Nwadike hit twice while captain Omagbemi, Mercy Akide and Avre scored a goal each to seal up the 8-0 victory for the Nigerians.
Eight teams participated in the championship: Nigeria, Morocco, Democratic Congo Republic and Egypt in Group A, and Ghana, South Africa, Mozambique, and Cameroon in Group B. The top two finishers represented Africa in the Women's World Cup that held in the United States in 1999.

WHY I WILL NEVER FORGIVE OWUMI – MAIGARI

I can reveal that the heads of Nigerian football are in war. The two? Aminu Maigari and Davidson Owumi. Maigari is the President of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) and Owumi, Chairman of the Nigeria Premier League (NPL). How and why this new war?

Now hear this. Aminu Maigari is angry with Owumi. Why? He is of the concerted opinion that Davidson Owumi took him and the NFF to court. How and when?

Harrison Jalla, the president of the National Association of Nigerian Footballers (NANF) it would be recalled dragged so many parties to court including the NFF, the NPL and their various leaders. Owumi’s name was listed as a “defendant” and Maigari was so listed too.

But Maigari ironically does not understand that Owumi was not the petitioner and that both of them were sued as defendants.

He told a meeting why he would not forgive Owumi. He went to his car, brought out the court paper and was pointing to the list saying. “he took us to court” efforts to make him understand his ‘ignorance’ proved abortive.

Ironically, he repeated the same charge in the presence of Owumi in another meeting later the same day pointing at Owumi: “You took us to court”. Please, don’t forget that the same Maigari could not name how many teams play in the Nigerian league system