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I had looked forward to the extraordinary congress of the
Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), which held last Friday.

Somehow, I had nursed the hope that something positive would come
out of it given developments of the days leading up to the congress.

In the immediate aftermath of the impeachment of NFF boss, Sani
Lulu, and two of his lieutenants, a member of the football house’s congress had
wryly remarked that the next step would be to sack the entire board of the
federation.

Given the fact that the sacked NFF chiefs were not alone in
their misadventure, I had been impressed that the effete congress was finally
going to do something reasonable. That expectation proved to be forlorn.

The whole exercise, rather than deal with key issues relating to
the administration of the game particularly the vexed issue of Lulu’s
unilateral tinkering with the NFF statutes, turned out to be a huge waste of
time.

Rather than dissecting the Lulu statutes to see whether the
changes are such as may not have a salutary effect on the running of football,
they tactlessly adopted it wholesale.

From the communiqué adopted at that meeting, it was clear that
the bulk of the individuals who gathered in Abuja that day were more interested
in rubber stamping Lulu’s removal and clearing themselves of allegations of
wrongdoing in respect to the alleged jamboree in South Africa than charting a
new course for football in the country.

This fact is made clear from the communiqué when they took pains
to state that the congress: “Noted with satisfaction the submission of the NFF
Executive Committee that there is no iota of truth in the allegation that State
FAs were each bribed with the sum of N5,000,000 (Five Million Naira)”.

Knowing the lack of morals and fidelity of some of the men who
run football in Nigeria, the truth of what happened in South Africa will come
out one day; maybe even sooner than we think.

If I were to hazard a guess however, I’ll definitely wager that
something untoward must have transpired to have pushed members of the congress
to rush to deny receipt of any bribe. For the duration of the World Cup, there
were speculations that Lulu took the 37 state football association chairmen to
South Africa in order to win them over to his side.

When you consider that Lulu’s original move was to trim the
number of members of congress eligible to vote at the August elections to 44
including the 37 chairman of state FAs then you begin see that the allegation
of wrongdoing may not be farfetched.

A missed opportunity

As things stand, nothing has changed. We are still stuck with
the same old characters; men who lack spunk and ideas to drive Nigerian
football. We are stuck with a collection of yes-men, a motley mix of goons and
timeservers incapable of generating new ideas.

The speed with which they disowned Lulu and his impeached
henchmen and embraced their ‘sworn enemies’ in the sports ministry clearly
shows that they lacked the courage of their convictions. To just keel over
without making a stand shows clearly that they are just plain craven. An
individual should stand for something or he will fall for anything. No matter
how untenable a man’s beliefs are, he should be able to defend them until a
superior argument knocks it over. For the men in the NFF interim executive
committee and the congress at large, that seems not to be an option.

Now, I do not suggest that the removal of Lulu was wrong. If
anything, I believe it was the best thing to happen to Nigerian football in a
long while. My point is that Nigerian football would have been better served if
the entire leadership of the NFF had thrown in the towel or at least tried to
defend their performance in office instead of capitulating without a fight.

How these men hope to organise an election in which credible
people will emerge remains to be seen. With the present statutes in place, any
hope of an inclusive administration of football may be farfetched. The reason
is that the statutes put too much power in the hands of the president who may
decide to wield it arbitrarily. In a sense, it can be said that Lulu himself
became a victim of the near unbridled powers he was handed by the statutes.

And so, rather than address this important issue, the congress
elected to maintain the status quo to the detriment of Nigerian football.