Peace and harmony
appear to have become extinct in Nigerian football after the recent
face-off between the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) and the Nigeria
Premier League (NPL).
The round leather game has been hit by crisis after crisis in recent times with the trend becoming worse in the last two years.
If it’s not members
of the football federation slugging it out with one another over travel
allowances or positions within in-house committees, it will be the NFF
engaging in a war of words with other members of the football
community. The second half of 2010 was particularly plagued by crises,
which made nonsense of any efforts to administer the game.
Some of the
conflicts have spilled into this New Year, with combatants heading to
the courts — most notably Harrison Jalla and his National Association
of Nigerian Footballers (NANF), dragging the NFF to court over the
legitimacy of its current board led by Aminu Maigari.
There is also the
case over who should be the Premier League’s title sponsor. Globacom
had filed a suit at a Federal High Court in Lagos after the NPL awarded
the sponsorship right to rivals telecommunication company MTN. Globacom
is claiming amongst other things that, MTN did not participate in the
bid process and therefore, cannot be named league sponsor.
NFF versus Owumi
By far the biggest rift presently engulfing Nigerian football is undoubtedly the face-off between the NFF and Davidson Owumi.
Owumi, a former
Nigeria international whose entire club career were with club sides
based in Nigeria, was last year elected chairman of the NPL. But the
NFF, at the end of its last General Assembly in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom
State capital on December 29, 2010, announced that he was no longer the
head of the league body as he was not qualified, in the first instance,
to contest in the election that had ushered him into office.
In reaching this
verdict, the NFF based its decision on the ruling of an Arbitration
Panel headed by Akin Ibidapo-Obe, an associate professor of law from
the University of Lagos and set up by the immediate past board headed
by Sani Lulu.
The NFF board under
Lulu had set up the panel as a means of resolving the imbroglio that
ensued following Owumi’s emergence as the chairman of the NPL at the
end of the league body’s May 8, 2010 election.
Victor Baribote,
who had vied for the post of NPL chairman at the May 8 polls, albeit
unsuccessfully, along with current Kaduna State Commissioner of Sports,
Mohammed Abdul-Azeez, had appealed against Owumi’s election saying he
was not qualified to vie for a position within the NPL. Abdul-Azeez was
the General Manager of the Kaduna State government-owned Ranch Bees at
the time of the election.
They based their argument on the grounds that Owumi was not the head of any of the country’s Premier League sides.
Owumi had
previously been the CEO of Enugu Rangers, a club he had played for, and
it was from that position that he to become the chairman of the Club
Owners Association, a body consisting of over 50 professional club
sides.
However, he was no
longer the Rangers boss in the months leading up to the NPL election
but after signifying his intention to run for a position within the
board of the NPL, his nomination forms were endorsed by his successor,
Paul Chibuzor thus confirming Owumi, even if not explicitly, as a
member of the Rangers board.
Owumi’s endorsement
was however denounced by Sam Onyishi, who was the chairman of the
Rangers Management Board, the club’s holding company. Onyishi, later
did a U-turn on his earlier decision and eventually sent a letter
endorsing Owumi’s nomination after the expiration of the deadline.
Some, however,
argued that the NPL recognised the initial endorsement letter from
Chibuzor as the league body only does business directly with the club
and not with the holding company.
But even if that
was the case and Owumi was a member of the Rangers board at the time of
the election, Baribote’s argument is that even though he was still the
chairman of the Club Owners Association and later the Chairman of
Chairmen, Owumi was no longer the CEO of Rangers, and as such, was not
in a position to vie for the post of NPL chairman.
But did the NPL election guidelines state that only club bosses should vie for the post of NPL chairman?
“There is nowhere
in the election guidelines where it was stated that only chairmen of
Premier League clubs can become chairman of the NPL,” said Emeka Nwani,
the media officer of the league body. “Anybody, so long as he has been
endorsed by a club was free to contest.” Nwani’s view is similar to
that of Paul Bassey, a sports journalist and member of the media
committees of FIFA and CAF.
Reneging on an agreement?
Writing in his
weekly column in a Nigerian newspaper, Bassey, who was initially the
secretary of the Electoral Committee set up to oversee the May 8 NPL
election before being removed following petitions from those who said
he was a close friend of Oyuki Obaseki, a former chairman of the NPL,
noted that Baribote and Abdul-Azeez “were at the NPL Congress which
took place on January 20, 2010 at the La Monde Hotel in Abuja where
decisions were made to streamline election guidelines.”
One of the
decisions taken at the meeting which had in attendance representatives
of all the 20 Premier League clubs, according to Bassey, was that owing
to the disparity in the composition of the management committees of the
various clubs, with some of them having chairmen while others had sole
administrators or general managers, “the NPL Congress decided that any
member of management or executive committee of any club was free to
contest election as chairman of chairmen.”
And it was through
that platform, as the chairman of chairmen, that Owumi rose to become
the NPL’s boss before the subsequent appeals filed by Baribote and
Abdul-Azeez.
However, in line
with the Standard Electoral Code (SEC) of FIFA, the NPL set up an
Appeal Committee which, after going through the matter, confirmed Owumi
as the chairman of the NPL which, according to Article 12 (4)
explicitly states that “the decisions of the election appeal committee
are final and may not be monitored by any government body.”
A similar view is
also to be found in the NPL’s 2010 Election Guidelines under Article G
(iii) which states that: “Decisions of the Electoral Appeals Committee
shall be final.”
It was however at
this point, especially with Baribote threatening to go to court over
the decision, that the Lulu-led NFF board opted to set up the
Ibidapo-Obe led Arbitration Panel.
There are however those who feel the decision of the panel does not supersede those of the NPL’s Appeal Committee.
“The electoral
guidelines used in conducting the election was accepted (by the NFF)
and it is clearly stipulated in the guidelines that any dispute should
be referred to the Appeal Committee which sat on the case and upheld
the outcome,” said Ahmed Gara-Gombe, a former boss of the Gombe State
FA.
“But they (the NFF)
set up a panel which in reality was just a consultative body, and this
panel said that the election should be annulled. This cannot be because
the NPL Congress accepted the outcome of the election only for someone
else to annul it,” added Gara-Gombe who traced the origin of the
annulment to Owumi’s rift with the Lulu-led NFF.
Origins of the rift
In September 2007,
the NFF suspended some NPL officials including Obaseki, his deputy,
Shehu Gusau and the secretary Salisu Abubakar after both bodies failed
to agree on who had the right to appoint referees for league matches
ahead of the commencement of the 2007/2008 Premier League season. The
suspensions ranged from two to three years.
Owumi was also
slammed with a three-year suspension after he spoke out against the
NFF’s decision. The suspension was later reduced to six months with
effect from October 2, 2007, and it ended in April 2008. But since that
incident, the relationship between Owumi and Lulu deteriorated.
“That is the reason
for setting up the panel because with his emergence as the chairman of
the NPL Owumi automatically became the second vice-chairman of the NFA
(or vice-president of the NFF),” continued Gara-Gombe.
“Don’t forget that
Lulu was back then still keen on getting re-elected and it wouldn’t
have augured well for him to now have someone who would stand in his
way as his deputy. But I’m not surprised that the people now in the NFA
decided to now uphold the illegal decision of the panel because they
are all birds of a feather.” Going by FIFA’s electoral code and the
articles in the guidelines of both the NFF and NPL, the NFF’s
Arbitration Panel may after all have been illegal.
This is partly
because the NFF had sent observers to monitor the NPL election and no
anomaly was reported. Also, two current serving board members of the
NFF — Enyimba’s chairman Felix Anyansi-Agwu and Referees’ Committee
chairman Suleiman Muazu — were members of the NPL’s Electoral Committee
that ushered in Owumi.
“I am baffled by it
all,” was Owumi’s reaction when NEXT got across to him via telephone,
“But I have said all I wanted to say on the matter. There is nothing
else to say that I had not already said through the statement I made
available to the press,” added Owumi before politely asking to be
excused as he was in a meeting.
The statement Owumi
was referring to was the one he released on December 30 in which he
said, amongst other things, that he remains the NPL boss adding that
the Congress of the NPL had earlier met and confirmed his position on
the Premier League board.
He also stated that he objected to the Arbitration Panel especially as the NPL had “already taken a decision on the matter.”
Regardless of who
is right or wrong, the only logical route to take is for all parties
involved to reach an amicable settlement as the victims at the end of
the day could be the players and the coaches of Premier League sides; a
league that appears to be gradually picking momentum thanks to certain
innovations recently instituted by the new leadership of the NPL.
Whether the league will continue to blossom without the NPL’s head
remains to be seen but according to Obaseki, “It is a step in the wrong
direction and it will do no one any good… I just pray that this
brewing crisis doesn’t spill over because if it spills over, then we
are in for another round of crisis.”
