Sports Ministers are the problem with Nigeria’s football. They come with jaded mindsets about what is happening in the GlassHouse in Abuja. For most ministers, the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) is the most corrupt body in the universe. So, they always come for the jugular of its president, not minding if he is achieving results or not.
Every new minister visits the NFF secretariat first, even when all the stadia are in ruins. Rather than ask National Sports Commission (NSC) officials where all the cash budgeted for stadium development goes, he listens to their advice and calls for a change immediately without following the due process.
Ministers want to run NFF budgets, even as no NFF board has been found guilty of corruption. Since ministers deal directly with the President, they tell tales about what they see as the administrative tardiness at the Glasshouse. Our shambolic outings in the other 43 sports do not matter. Till date, the NFF is the most successful federation among the others, yet this is where the most bizarre changes are made.
Many sports federations don’t attend major competitions as important as the Africa Cup of Nations and nothing happens. Members fight themselves and provide evidence of corrupt practices in their sports, but such incidents are treated with levity.
Indeed, most ministers divide the ranks in our football anytime our male footballers raise any dust. The women understand why such things happen and win laurels. Super Eagles and ministers are the cancer in our football. Eagles have embarrassed us twice in Namibia and Brazil. Rather than disband the team, we are busy trying to smuggle the coaches, who couldn’t get the boys to travel back, into the team.
For instance, majority of the countries at the World Cup have not received their appearance fees. Our Eagles have, alongside Cameroon and Ghana.
Our girls’ teams (Falconets and Super Falcons) have shone despite these crises. The Eagles are struggling to qualify for the Cup of Nations – a competition in which they are the defending champions.
It is the eagerness to remove everyone in the GlassHouse and install the minister’s men that has always set Nigeria against the constituted authorities in FIFA and CAF. Some 208 countries abide by FIFA’s simple rules; Nigeria won’t. Ministers see the window in Decree 101, which gives them the power to intervene at any time they feel that things are not going well with our football. Sadly, the Aminu Maigari-led NFF qualified for all FIFA’s competitions, earning the body accolades from the world football ruling body. Nigeria was the only country out of 209 – our country inclusive – to achieve that feat, yet our minister hounded that board out with ignominy.
In a desperate attempt to remove Maigari, all manner of people were recruited and promised positions at the NFF. Perhaps, the minister thought he could muscle in Giwa. But the insistence on doing the election on the basis of the FIFA statutes scuttled an effort which would have sailed through in the past where the minister would have invoked Decree 101 to install Giwa. The minister’s tacit support in the kangaroo election that ushered in Giwa left much to be desired. Again, the swiftness in implementing the initial court verdict gave an indication about what the government wanted.
Had the minister withdrawn from the illegal attempt to enthrone Giwa, especially when the legitimate NFF held its congress, first on the road and then inside one hotel in Abuja, maybe Giwa would have seen reason to give up his ambition in the interest of Nigeria.
The spates of arrest of key functionaries of the NFF gave the now de facto group some hope that their dreams would soon be realised. Now that they are left holding the short end of the stick, they have no other option but to play the spoiler role or become the monster that could consume the minister, if he isn’t careful.
The minister encouraged the charade at the court by immediately implementing the judgment. He appointed an interim secretary for the NFF – an action which negates the statutes. The Jos court ruling was unnecessary when the end of the Maigari-led board was less than 30 days away. Pundits wondered why the minister was in a hurry to sack a board on the verge of finishing its tenure.
Had the minister listened to submissions from stakeholders and perhaps bothered to speak with FIFA men, he would have known that only the Congress can do what he had in mind. Besides, the minister also refused to deny the fact that he was supporting Giwa to replace Maigari. His body language gave him away and set other stakeholders against Giwa – if to prove to the minister that he is human after all.
How the minister blew the chance to redeem himself still baffles this writer. He could have divided the Maigari-led camp than muscle them through needless harassment. The minister would have stopped the kangaroo elections, the moment some aggrieved people stormed out of the hotel to conduct their meeting in one of the streets in Abuja.
Again, the second meeting should not have been in Warri, not Abuja. FIFA’s insistence on having Maigari to supervise the last congress ought to have shown the minister where the pendulum was swinging. It is, however late, in the day for the minister to do CAF’s and FIFA’s biddings, having allowed Giwa to spend money on the elections. No one will blame Giwa, if he tries to play the spoilsport, if that is what he needs to show that he cannot be taken for a ride. Again, had the minister being neutral in his disposition to the two sides in the impasse, he could have pleaded with Giwa to shift grounds, having known that the earlier arrangement would not be accepted by FIFA.
Interestingly, it has dawned on the Nigerian government that FIFA can ban us, unlike after the South Africa 2010 World Cup when the defunct Presidential Task Force (PTF) advised the president to withdraw the country from all soccer competitions for two years for us to reinvent the game here. FIFA threatened a ban and the president, after reading the wise counsel from his Facebook fans, reversed his decision.
CAF President Issa Hayatou said Nigeria has become an embarrassment to both FIFA and the continental body. Indeed, Hayatou revealed that he begged Sepp Blatter not to stop the final game between Nigeria’s Falcons and their Cameroonian counterparts stating that if he didn’t do that, he would have been accused of helping his country to lift the trophy without kicking the ball. That is true Hayatou. One hopes that Nigeria will utilise this window to get the illegal NFF off our backs in the interest of the youth who play this game to eke out a living.
We are in this quagmire because certain key government men who dabbled in the peace moves earlier played politics with the matter. Rather than tell all the parties to abide by the tenets of the FIFA statutes, they were interested in stopping the previous board from staging a return. It will be sad if FIFA bans Nigeria. Falcons would have laboured in vain as they would be prevented from participating at the World Cup slated to hold next year in Canada. All our national teams would stop all their playoffs. We would be declared a pariah nation. Even the domestic games’ results wouldn’t be regonised because they would be handled by referees not recognised by FIFA. So, those rooting for the ban so that we can redefine our game must know that for the locust period, nothing would be valid.
It would be sad if the government shuns this disturbing trend because many of our good players would seek new nationality in a bid to earn their living for the period when we would be banned. Thank God Giwa has withdrawn the case from court. I hope he won’t drag us back to it, if his demands are not met?
Let’s boo these fumbling coaches
The story of the return of the Super Eagles technical crew is laughable. In this crew is a man who told us before his sack that he had seven offers, now being asked to rescue an assignment that has placed our chances of defending the trophy we won in South Africa last year in the cliff hanger. Some say it is a presidential directive. Hmmm! Nigeria, we hail thee. Nigeria jaga, jaga.
Change, ordinarily, is meant to retrieve something that has lost its course. Indeed, when changes are made, the best gauge to find out if the decision is good rests with how people receive the news. When the technical crew with jaded tactics was eased out of office, the ovation was very loud round the country. Till date, no player has openly supported the return of the technical crew. Their silence means consent and that is where the decision to recall these coaches may further ruin our chances of making it to the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations in Morocco. These Eagles don’t want to help these coaches to succeed because of what has befallen their colleagues who lost out after feuds with this vindictive technical crew.
Besides, the person who persuaded the NFF to reverse its decision must stand up to accept that he made a mistake if we fail to get the qualification ticket. I also hope that the coaches would be made to sign a code of conduct, where they would be mandated to submit their team list to the NFF for scrutiny before it is made public.
Part of the code of conduct for these coaches is the need to guard their utterances that have made Nigeria a laughing stock in the soccer polity. I hoped that the returning coaches know what they are doing because it would be foolhardy for them to complain about late payment of their salaries. Now is the time to reject the offer because I don’t see how this federation can pay coaches N5 million monthly, if Nigeria isn’t at the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations.
If Nigeria fails to qualify for the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations, I hope that the coaches would resign honourably, now that our Ogas at the top have given them a lifeline to rescue the Eagles. I wonder what they would tell Nigerians when they return. What a pity. Let’s boo these fumbling coaches.
