Dissolution of Federations' Board Is To Have Control Over Olympics Funds - Stakeholder Alleges

  Dissolution of Federations' Board Is To Have Control Over Olympics Funds - Stakeholder Alleges By Niyi Busari A top Nigeria sports stakeholder, Gara Gombe has alleged that the major reason the Ministry of Youth and Sports Development dissolved the Board of 31 Sports Federations is to take control of funds that will be released for the oncoming Olympics in Tokyo, BSNSports.com.ng can report. Gara said this in an exclusive interview with BSN Sports on Saturday. He said: "They just want to take control of the money for Olympics that's all. So that, no federation will supervise their funds." He told BSN Sports. He added, "They will take over and appoint the Caretaker Committees. All he wants to do is to appoint his friends and one civil servant as Secretary. If you see the code of governance which I have a copy, the power of the secretary is even more than that of the president. And this is a secretary who comes from the Ministry." Gara suggested that the ministry of sports should have organised a stakeholders meeting where he would have informed and agreed with the Board of the Federations about the dissolution before taking such action. "What he (Sunday Dare) should have done is to call all the federation bodies and do stakeholders meeting with all the Federations. Agree with all of them on what he wants to do. He stated that the Minister of Sports lacked the power to dissolve the 31 Board of Federations, adding that it is a punishment to dissolve the leadership of the Federations. "In fact, dissolution is punitive in nature. Firstly, he lacked power to do such. The same code of governance that he's using to dissolve the Federations is just a temporary document of convenient, developed before the Federations have their elections and before their statutes and constitutions. And all of them came with their statutes and constitutions which were approved. The moment they have their constitutions and elections conducted, this code of governance is useless because the Constitution is a binding document that guides operation and existence of the federation. Code of governance has no legal statute. It's like bringing election guidelines and constitution. Once the election is conducted, election guidelines is no longer useful until another election. But the Constitution which then take precedence or its existence contains in it how the next election should be conducted. Unless if there's no constitutions of all the Federations that's when you can use electoral guidelines or code of governance. The date of tenure this time has not elapsed. They did Elections on June 13, 2017 and today is April 30." The Ministry of Youth and Sports Development on Friday, April 30 announced dissolution of 31 Sports Federations and replaced them with three-man committee who will oversee the next federations elections. The Federations had their last elections on June 13, 2017.