Nigeria Content Online

As the election date into the board of the Nigeria Football
Federation draws near (three days to go), one of the contestants in the
election into the board of Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), Segun Odegbami on
Tuesday sent a petition to FIFA President Sepp Blatter on the illegality of the
election and why it must not hold.

Odegbami wants Blatter to ask the Electoral Committee to request
for and collate evidence from all proposed voting delegates to the elections
and ensure that they are first duly elected in their states and ensure that
their tenures since their last elections have not expired.

Secondly, Odegbami is asking Blatter to prevail on the Electoral
Committee to publish the list of old delegates and that any one that voted four
years ago cannot vote again without evidence of having being re-elected or
re-appointed.

The statutes must be
followed

He is also asking that the Electoral Committee must insist that
the 2010 Statutes of the NFF must be followed.

“The 2008 decision of the Congress in Makurdi is faulty and is,
therefore, not binding on the state FAs,” he said, adding that “the dates of
elections into the various boards of the members cannot be dictated by the NFF
congress but by the congress of the different bodies and that they all are free
to go back and conduct their elections in accordance to their statutes”.

Odegbami continued his petition, saying “In consideration of the
above, that the present situation of discontent amongst those participating in
the present elections, the national elections be delayed for a short period to
allow the State FAs and other members with a similar situation, to conduct
their own elections.”

Blatter has to step in

The former Eagles captain reminded Blatter that the NFF ignored
his suggested amendments to the statutes sent for his approval.

“Once again I draw your particular attention to Articles 19, 20,
21, 22, 23 and 24 in the draft statutes. In the new statutes they have all been
correctly and completely removed from the statutes. The local football councils
are not even directly affiliated to the NFF and should not have been in the NFF
Statutes. They are members of the state FAs. The state FAs and the Leagues are
just two members out of many that constitute the NFF. All the members of the
NFF are independent bodies with their own constitutions or statutes and whose
affairs must not be interfered with by any external bodies including the NFF.

These are your words in your letter of November 2, 2009, to the
NFF: “Art 10 par 4 of the NFF Statutes interferes in the organisation of the
members of the NFF which should organise themselves without any external entity
including the NFF”.

Odegbami concluded by saying only three of the 37 members of the
present NFF have not exceeded their 4-years tenure by July 2010.

“I can specifically confirm that Ogun State, to which I belong,
conducted its election into its present board in the year 2005. Lagos State
conducted theirs in 2004. Most others are like that.

All the States would have, on their own, conducted their various elections
at the times when their tenures expired but for the NFF Congress decision taken
in the year 2008 in Makurdi that directed all States to hold their elections in
November/December 2010. This it did not have the power to do.”