FG Vs NFF: Between Intervention And Interference

FG Vs NFF: Between Intervention And Interference 

By Our Reporter

When the Nigeria national teams are going for international tournaments, the Nigeria Football Federation NFF would request for Federal Government intervention funds which would be provided without raising eye-brow. But when the Federal Government advise the Federation on doing the right thing, the NFF will turn around and label it Interference.

The NFF is a parastatal under the Ministry of Youth and Sports Development and receive funds through annual budget from the Federal Government. This money received from budget is different from intervention funds given to NFF ahead of international competition.

Ahead of the September elections of the NFF, the Sports minister, Sunday Dare, sent a letter to the President of the Nigeria Football Federation, Amaju Pinnick, on June 17, 2022, saying that the former CAF 1st Vice President should do everything in making sure that the NFF Elections is held as and when due.

It is noteworthy that June 17, 2022, was over 100 days to September 20, 2022, the date of the expiration of the term of the present Nigeria Football Federation Executive Committee. It was to allow for more than enough time for the electoral processes to be consummated. There have been precedents where the processes were concluded in far lesser time. That memo was a reminder to the one sent two months earlier.

It is noteworthy that in the wake of Nigeria’s failure to qualify for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, the NFF Executive Committee met in the first week of April and promised to set machinery in place for its elective congress once all the court cases preventing it from doing so were out of the way.

With the news that the legal moves to withdraw those cases had been initiated, it was important to remind the NFF Executive Committee of its own decision.

Perhaps, it is also important to highlight the fact that the majority of the NFF congressmen across the different geopolitical zones had been meeting and putting pressure on everyone, including the Sports ministry and the NFF Executive Committee to call for their Annual General Assembly. These agitations can shut down the football ecosystem in Nigeria.

The question to ask is, what should a responsible supervisory ministry do in the light of all these?

The need to reform Nigerian football and improve its governance structure has become a critical matter for many years.

The 2010 NFF statutes have been described as obsolete by almost every football stakeholder. Most people have called for its review after over a decade.

In 2018, the NFF congress approved the setting up of a reforms committee. That committee was made up of many NFF Executive Committee members and some congressmen and women.

It will be interesting to commission an investigation into what happened to that reforms committee and its report.

As presently constituted, the NFF Congress has eight members as listed correctly in the editorial – the state Football Associations, league bodies (NPFL, NNL, NWFL and NLO), referees association, coaches’ association and players’ union, however only one of these members has 84% of voting rights, while the other seven share the remaining 16%.

Who will correct this imbalance in the representation at the NFF congress? Who will champion the calls for inclusiveness in the overriding interests of our football development

Last year, the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), told the FIFA President, Gianni Infantino, when the latter paid him a visit in Abuja, that one of the legacies he would want to leave for Nigerian football is the improvement of its governance structure. The Football Roadmap Committee set up by Mr President completed its assignment in Abuja a fortnight ago and would be presenting the report to the Federal Government, through the Ministry of Youth and Sports Development any moment from now.

Recently, in a Punch Editorial, the minister has been called out over his good intention for fairer, more inclusive and equitable representation of football stakeholders in the nation’s highest football decision making organ but this was described By Punch as being motivated by ‘hidden interests’ and a jamboree. Clearly, this is an unfair assessment of the minister’s genuine ‘national interests’.

The editorial equally said the President and the Minister had no powers to interfere with the NFF election. Perhaps, the PUNCH needs to read our constitution again. Nigeria is a sovereign nation. The ministry is statutory and draws its powers from the constitution of the country. The NFF is not sovereign. It is an entity created by the government. The NFF is not a country. It draws its legitimacy from the government and must respect our laws and respect government officials with statutory powers of oversight.

‘Stakeholders should tell Buhari and Dare that the NFF is not a federal department and that calling for the amendment of its statutes is political interference.’ Punch wrote in its editorial.

In the minister’s memo to the NFF, he wrote that, “the amended statutes should reflect the national yearnings, aspirations and peculiarities of Nigeria as a sovereign nation while aligning with the principles and objectives of football as set by the world soccer governing body, FIFA.

The reality is that many people forget that before any international sports federation, there must first be a nation.

Every member of FIFA is expected to domesticate the football laws in accordance with the laws of its land. No member of FIFA operates in space, they do not exist in isolation. There must be some physical jurisdiction. FIFA is bound by Swiss Law; the Confederation of African Football operates within the confines of Egyptian laws because its headquarters is in Cairo. So, the Minister of Sports is within his rights to demand the same from the NFF.

Remember that most of those seeking offices into international federations seek government endorsements and approval before they are allowed to contest such positions.

When funds are made available to these federations to enable them to prepare Nigerian teams for international competitions, it is classified as intervention, but once the government seeks for its interests to be respected, it becomes interference.

The NFF board receives billions of money appropriated to the NFA, and spends as the NFF but turns around to say “interference” when they owe their existence and recognition to the government and because the government rightly decides to direct them to do something about illegal aspect of their statutes, they still don’t want to obey the laws of the land. Rather, they have chosen the path of attacking the minister, the supervising ministry and Mr. President.