In Nigeria, we have three tiers of government. These are federal, state and local governments.
At each level of government, there are different sectors created to cater for every need of the citizens.
Sports is one of those sectors. And sports administration is not exclusive to the federal government. The state and local governments are equally supposed to play a role in its development.
The federal government takes the basic responsibility of providing infrastructure with which citizens who are talented in sports could hone their skills and blossom for self and country.
In sports, talents are supposed to be discovered at very young ages and nurtured to stardom. This is basically grassroots sports development.
And because government at the local and state levels is closer to the people, it is supposed to create programmes from which these talents could be discovered.
Apart from discovering talents, it also behooves the states and local governments to build simple infrastructure for their citizens to train and compete with.
They could equally be supported by private individuals and corporate organisations by giving them grants and also build infrastructure.
I have taken pains to point out these facts because of the recent development following the mass resignation of the Ibrahim Musa Gusau led Executive Committee of the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF.
While we accept that Gusau and his colleagues should take responsibility for the failure of our various national teams, truth must be told that the failure started from the lower cadre of football administration, which is the local and state governments.
Football at the local government level seems totally comatose because out of the 774 local governments in the country, the number of them which have functional infra- structure and technical expertise for football development could be counted on finger tips.
Talents abound in these 774 local governments but they are never discovered how much more groomed to stardom.
This is equally the experience in most of the 36 states of the federation and the federal capital territory.
While the 37 Football Associations are hardly functional, unfortunately the 37 chairmen who do very little or noth- ing to develop football in their states, form the bulk of the voting power and decide who runs Nigeria’s football or how it should be run. Most of these chairmen are either
politicians or civil servants appointed by state governors and may not be abreast with the dynamics of modern football that has become more scientific.
As the regional organs and grassroots representatives of the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, they are supposed to manage and develop football at the state and local levels. They should be organizing local competitions, school sports, and youth programs to scout and nurture young talents which the NFF would pick from for national teams.
Also they should provide enabling environment for local football clubs, academies, and players within the state to grant them official recognition and eligibility for league competitions at both the local and state governments level.
They should also engage in capacity building by conducting training, workshops and certification programs for local coaches, referees, and administrators.
They should be involved in local, state and regional league administration. It is their duty to supervise state-level and amateur leagues in collaboration with the NFF.
That is the responsibility that should guarantee them participation in the NFF Congress where they could then join in mapping out national football policies.
State Football Associations’ chairmen are now behaving like State governors who have assumed the role of deciders of the country’s political direction. The governors ‘gang up’ to decide that only one of them must be chosen by political parties to run for the presidency of Nigeria. This is the same thing State FA chairmen want to be the norm in electing president and the Executive Committee of the NFF.
The audacity of these chairmen to say that they, more than all other stakeholders who have been shut out of the election process, would continue to dictate how football should be governed, is what led to the recent campaign to rescue football from their stranglehold.
In the forefront to confront the skewed system are men like Segun Odegbami, Danladi Bako, Adokiye Amiesimaka, Sani Toro, among many others. On the driver’s seat to address the concerns raised by other marginalised stake- holders is the Chairman and Director General of the National Sports Commission, NSC, Shehu Dikko and Bukola Olopade.
Nigerians clamoured for a change of guard at the NFF.
One of the state chairmen warned the government that FIFA would ban Nigeria if the structure of the NFF as rep- resented by the Gusau board was tinkered with.
As the federal government began to look into the NFF’s finance books, the entire board with Gusau as well as the General Secretary resigned en masse. And because there can’t be a vacuum, the NSC, as the supervisory body, appointed the deputy General Secretary in an acting capacity to run the secretariat.
A visit to FIFA was quickly arranged to brief the world body about the situation. FIFA has now endorsed the reform of the NFF with an advice that “it has to go through the proper process and the rulebooks”.
Other stakeholders want the closed doors open to accommodate them but state chairmen still want to retain their number in the Congress which gives them an undeserved advantage.
What the state chairmen don’t understand is that it is no longer government interfering but that other major stake- holders have risen up and have said ‘enough is enough ‘.
They have been bullied enough with FIFA ban. FIFA have heard their cry and have agreed that NFF truly needs a reform. Nigerians are now waiting to see the reform carried out so that football could breathe again.
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