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Here
we go again. Our very worst is again put on display. For the umpteenth
time, the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) bespatters mud on Nigerians
through rank chicanery. Once again, the men who run football in Nigeria
prove to be goblins incapable of ennobling conduct. How long shall we
suffer these creatures, these men who seem unable to rein in their
destructive demons? Yesterday, it was the sleaze of the Hampshire
Hotel, the $236,000 that ‘miraculously’ flew out of a locker in the
NFF’s stained glass house and Sani Lulu’s familial jamboree to the 2010
Africa Cup of Nations in Angola. Today, it is the tragicomedy of the
Obama Cup. The signs were all there from day one. Discerning Nigerians
saw the tournament for what it was — a caper designed to profit a few
individuals who surely must be unmasked as long as God lives.

When Jide Fashikun,
the radical journalist based in Abuja, alerted Nigerians to the phony
nature of the tournament, the spin masters at the NFF vilified him in
the same manner they had reviled him when he told his countrymen that
the botched international friendly game with Guatemala existed only in
the opaque minds of the NFF’s top brass.

Now we know better.
Their caper is exposed and the world is witness once again to their
greed, if not criminality. The signs were all there. Twenty-four hours
before Coach Samson Siasia and his boys left for the United States,
Nigerian newspapers had reported that the tournament was off. Some of
them, using the Panama football federation as a source, said the
tournament had been shifted to the second week of this month.

Officials of the
NFF pretended not to have heard. Was it because they had information
about the tournament Nigerians were not privy to or was it important
that the team travelled just so the racket of a few individuals who
will sure be unmasked, came to fruition?

A convenient scapegoat

I am inclined to
believe that there was at play what lawyers refer to as mens rea
(criminal intent) and it should not be difficult to establish once the
matter is brought before officials of the Economic and Financial
Commission (EFCC) as it rightly should. With the racket unravelling,
the football federation has found a convenient scapegoat in match
agent, Pius Oleh. Speaking on Friday, NFF president, Aminu Maigari,
said the football federation was going to ask FIFA to have Oleh’s
licence revoked. It is all very well to blame Oleh, who the federation
says misled and embarrassed them, but the question remains, where were
Maigari and his men when reports indicated the tournament had been
called off? Were they on a trip to Mars?

Does Maigari really
want us to believe the NFF was ignorant of the latest developments
surrounding the tournament when we are not ninnies? There are
definitely questions that Maigari and his men need to provide answers
to. One of them is: how did Oleh come into the picture? Was he
contacted by the federation or did they approach him to help arrange
for them to participate in the tournament? If he was approached, who
made the initial contact and who exactly did he deal with at the
federation?

Answers to these questions will prove useful in determining whether
fraud has been perpetrated and who pays for the money expended by the
federation on the ill-fated tournament. We need to get to the bottom of
this so it doesn’t end up like the missing $236,000. Nigerian football
cannot continue to cope with the malfeasance that is slowly strangling
it to death. It needs a vitality that its present custodians cannot
provide. It is a shame that given the plenitude of decent
football-loving and God-fearing individuals in this country, the
commanding heights of Nigerian football are being held captive by
mediocrities, men incapable of rational or logical thought and action
as far as the administration of the game is concerned. Clearly, we need
to get out of this bind. Anyone who loves football must rise up and
demand that the game be saved from certain death, which will come if it
is left in the hands of its present superintendents.