The
hammer finally came down on Amos Adamu, FIFA’s executive committee
member, who along with five others, were implicated in cash-for-vote
scandal in October.
Mr. Adamu and the
others, who include Reynald Temarii, Slim Aloulou, Ahongalu Fusimalohi,
Amadou Diakite, and Ismael Bhamjee, had fallen for a sting operation
carried out by British newspaper, Sunday Times of London.
Reporters from the
paper had posed as lobbyists for American interests in the hosting of
the 2018 World Cup and had approached Mr. Adamu and the others for
support. Mr. Adamu was recorded on video where he asked for five
hundred thousand pounds to swing his vote in their favour.
The revelation
raised a storm around the world with FIFA, which promised to act
decisively on the matter. That action came on Thursday after three days
of deliberation by its ethics committee, which had met in October and
handed Mr. Adamu and his associates provisional suspension, came out
with its final report.
The committee, headed by Claudio Sulser, a former Switzerland international, ruled that:
“Amos Adamu (FIFA
executive committee member) was banned from taking part in any kind of
football-related activity (administrative, sports, or any other) at
national and international level for a period of three years.
Furthermore, he was fined CHF 10,000.”
The other indicted officials received bans ranging form one year to four years.
Mr. Adamu’s
conviction by the ethics committee will remain, for a long time to
come, a blight on his career. While the world argues whether the
punishment is condign or not, given the gravity of the offence he has
committed, the point must be noted that for followers of the game in
Nigeria, a moral victory has been scored.
Mr. Adamu, who
since the scandal broke in October, has kept away from the public, may
have a hard time re-integrating himself into the mainstream of the
global football community. While he may be re-admitted into FIFA, the
same way Bhamjee, who, in 2006 was banned for ticket racketeering was,
he will carry the stigma of the disgrace for a long time to come.
His fall from
castled height is clearly a lesson on the transience of power. Before
his travails began in October this year, Mr. Adamu bestrode the
Nigerian sports firmament like a colossus. Even though two years
before, he had been moved from the sports ministry following the outcry
on his stranglehold on the sports sector, he had remained influential
with his some of his key cronies still in the saddle in the different
sports associations, including football.
Moments before the
earth caved under his feet in October, he had luxuriated in his
position as the quintessential puppeteer, craftily manipulating the
legion of marionettes he installed in the sports establishment during
his nearly two decades tour of duty.
At the height of
the crisis, which engulfed Nigerian football, Mr. Adamu played God,
hectoring those who admonished that due process takes precedence over
ambition of a few individuals, and reminding them that the true locus
of power lay, not in the laws of Nigeria, but at the glass house in
Zurich.
For some of
Nigeria’s former footballers, who had shed sweat and blood for their
fatherland, Mr. Adamu had nothing but contempt. In one instance, he
dismissed them as beer parlour executives, who understood nothing about
the business of football administration.
It is ironic, like
Victor Ikpeba, one of the former Nigerian internationals Mr. Adamu
lampooned, that it is a former international from Switzerland that has
sealed his fate. Today, as he wrings his hands in dejection, he must
surely remember Chinua Achebe’s warning in his classic novel, Things
Fall Apart, that those who have had their palm kernels cracked for them
by benevolent spirits should not forget to be humble.
That is one lesson
those in whose custody have been placed the communal trust. Mr. Adamu
was in the FIFA executive committee to represent Nigeria’s interest,
but in the end, he found it more useful to use the global organisation
against his fatherland, freely conniving with it to rub Nigeria’s nose
in the dirt.
He forgot the timeless warning of Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians
10:12 that: “Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest
he fall.”
