In the 2003/2004 Season, Taiwo Ogunjobi, then Secretary-General of the NFA, in tandem with my good friend Mike Itemuagbor,
official marketer
of the NFA consummated league sponsorship and signed-off to MTN. The
equation suddenly changed. Political weight and other muscles, high
level connections an electrician would be envious of and government
apparatchik pushed MTN aside.
It has happened again in a very deplorable manner.
Back at one The NPL
has allegedly cancelled a contract duly entered into with MTN. All the
many issues that beset the NPL could not summon its Congress to parley
not even the Chairmanship dispute, but the sponsorship matter did. It
will be very instructive to know who footed the bill for the NPL
Congress that held in Abuja to repudiate the title sponsorship given to
MTN even in the face of a legal suit. Perhaps a review of what has
been, what should be and what in civilised climes sponsorship truly is
will suffice at this point.
In 1993, I went to
Cadbury to ask for sponsorship for the Football League with a bill of
just N5.5million. On offer was two million, five hundred naira for
title sponsorship and three million naira for leveraging the rights.
The Cadbury officials I spoke with then told me all kinds of put-off
things including the fact that the price was too much but I knew better
than that.
One year later,
having lost the bid to be official food drink of US ‘94 World Cup bound
Super Eagles, Cadbury took my proposal to the NFA to request the league
sponsorship rights. The NFA promptly accepted a cheque for N2 million
and Cadbury became title sponsor of the League.
Cadbury’s title
sponsorship lapsed in 1995 without any visible exploitation and quite
curiously, at a press briefing to announce its discontinuance, the
organisation moaned loudly that it got nothing from the sponsorship.
Then many of us wondered how they expected to benefit from just paying
for and then warehousing the property.
Origins
In 1996, a
discerning Pepsi Co International sought and got my assistance for the
obtaining of the sponsorship rights of the Pro-football League.
Together with their brand custodians, Insight Communications Ltd, we
fought a bloody battle against late intruders, Coca-Cola and got the
title sponsorship rights for Pepsi. It was ground breaking achievement
for football.
Eighteen million
sponsorship was powered by about nearly thirty million leveraging spend
by the sponsor. Pepsi national marketing Manager, Iain Nelson, a man
who knew his onions gave vent to many creative and innovative
leveraging planks for the sponsorship.
This was the face
and experience of the Pepsi League sponsorship until the fifth
columnists visited the League and Pepsi sponsorship of it.
The NFA with Tijani Yusuf as Secretary-General snuffed the life out Pepsi’s sponsorship of the league thereafter.
Warehousing not sponsorship
Then came the
battle of the GSM Companies. In 2003, with a deal seemingly locked in
by MTN, Glo suddenly emerged as league sponsorship rights owners. I
will not go into all the shenanigan that went down. Taiwo Ogunjobi, NFA
Secretary-General “got” instructions from the Presidency as we were
told and Glo edged-out MTN.
After years of Glo
sponsorship in which the stories were always that of expression of
dissatisfaction by both sponsor and the sponsored, and in which we saw
nothing near what Pepsi did in terms of exploitation and financial
obligations of the sponsorship being addressed promptly, the league
sponsorship is haemorrhaging again.
Who then are the
undertakers of the league? The Presidency whose name is ever often
called into the fray and sworn by when evil is about to be perpetrated
in our football? A sponsor who would rather warehouse the property than
leverage it? Paid drummers and rented commentators who stand facts on
their heads and swear by a sleeping sponsor yet cannot give us a good
reason for the position they have taken beyond talking through their
pockets?
Shameless inverters
of truth have been on pages of our news papers telling us hogwash about
MTN not being a Nigerian company and so cannot sponsor the league.
Since when did that become a criterion for the league sponsorship? We
all saw what the MTN sponsorship made of the FIFA World Cup 2010 in
South Africa, throwing up thrills, excitement, style and delivery of
the event. Ought we not to avail our football the opportunity to grow
and blossom instead of compressing it into yet another Nigerian ill-fed
and undernourished activity?
MTN’s bid was
through an agent, Total Sport International, so what? How does that
vitiate the right to title sponsorship which they won and had a
contract duly executed? The local laws on Agency and Supplies certainly
recognise the role of an agent, which does not appear to have been
breached in this transaction. All that balderdash we are being served
now is to fan the ego of a narrow interest at the expense of our
football and the growth of the NPL. If any party feels short-changed
the law courts are there for redress instead of the Shakespeare’s
Malviolo style clowning going on.
In concluding my
disapproval at the turn of event in the matter of title sponsorship of
the NPL, I venture to say that the Glo sponsorship has been gravely in
warehousing of the title sponsorship rights these many years which only
compounded the many problems that have snuffed life out of the NPL. And
it is not the kind of sponsorship I nor any reasonable man recommends
for the league.
A real and honest
sponsorship; this is what our football and the NPL need, not an
ego-war. If anyone can say sponsorship of the League in the last six
years met the criteria set above he or she should raise his hand.
The present imbroglio is not good for the game.
Someone please stop that small interest group in the name of God.
