Tag: nigerian league

Stationery Stores FC are bracing up for a return to the professional ranks of the Nigerian league, supersport.com can report.

The Flaming Flamingoes will compete in the second tier, the Nigeria National League (NNL), this season in place of Union Bank FC, who opted out due to financial reasons.

Officials of Stores FC, who have been working round-the-clock to revive the club since 2007, moved and acquired the slot of Union Bank in the National League.

Stores FC, who were in the top division between 1973 and 1992 before in-fighting led to their fall, have quietly gone ahead with their pre-season build-up since being admitted into the National League for the 2013/14 season.

Union Bank, which will eventually metarphose into Stationery Stores, defeated Glo Premier League side, Warri Wolves, 2-0 in a pre-season friendly match this week.

“The Union Bank team that played against Warri Wolves will form Stationery Stores for the new season in the National League,” an insider at Flaming Flamingoes told supersport.com.

Paperwork over the takeover of Union Bank by Stores is almost complete, supersport.com has been informed and in a matter of days an announcement is expected to be made.

One of the key figures spearheading the return of Stores, Tilewa Adebajo, whose father, Late Israel Adebajo, founded the club in 1958, was tight-lipped on the takeover of Union Bank’s slot in the National League.

“We will coordinate at the appropriate time,” Tilewa Adebajo simply said.

The Flaming Flamingoes are expected to start a new lease of life in the NNL this term when they play hosts to Abia Comets on match day one of the second tier.

Stationery Stores are expected to play their home matches this season at the Teslim Balogun and not Onikan Stadium, their original home ground.

A member of the League Management Committee (LMC), Dr. Danburan Abubakar, has said that the committee has no intention to sabotage any election of club owners, insisting that the mission of the committee is to lay a solid structure for the Nigeria Premier League (NPL) so as to withstand the test of time.

Abubakar, who is also the Kano State Commissioner for Commerce and Industry, while reacting to a purported statement signed by some club owners that they should be allowed to run the affairs of the league, said that the committee was a child of necessity when the Nigerian League was crumbling to a total collapse.

He said that the Kano State Government had disassociated itself from the clarion call by some club owners to be given autonomy by the Nigeria Football Federation to run their affairs, pointing out that even the four alleged club owners that signed the said document had apologised.

According to him, the committee was on a rescue mission because the league was in crisis, and in order to restructure it the committee took some necessary measures to salvage the league from collapsing.

He explained: “I think some of the club owners that were said to have come together to sign a document must have acted on ignorance, because we were not elected but we were carefully chosen across the country to save the premier league from dying at that time they took over.

“You would recall when we came on board, there were agitations that the league should not even start because the clubs were indebted to the tune of N100 Million; there was no money and clubs were not properly funded, there were a lot of crises as the committee was battling with court cases. We had a lot of challenges, but when we assumed office, we were able to put things in a proper shape by convincing the sponsors; they came back and now, Nigerians are happy with the job we have done.”

“We don’t intend to stay longer than necessary, but what I want the club owners to know is that we have started a job and we have to see that the job is completed and a solid structure is erected so as not to repeat what happened in last year’s league, where clubs were fighting each other, supporters invading the field of play or beating up referees. So, our mission is to strengthen the league in terms of financing, which is the key thing we need to ensure by putting those structures on the right track then election can come up.”