No Obscurity In What Club Owners Stands For - Danladi

No Obscurity In What Club Owners Stands For - Danladi

By Niyi Busari

The Chairman of Nigeria Professional Football League Club Owners Association, Barrister Isaac Danladi, has reiterated that there is no ambiguity to what the association stands for, noting that the body is clearly a legal entity.

The astute football administrator disclaimed the words of former Nigeria Premier League Chairman, Rumson Baribote who told the media on Sunday that the NPFL Club Owners Association is not known to Nigeria football laws.

Barrister Danladi who was a special guest on one of Nigeria’s top Sports Forum, Family United by Football (FUBF) on Monday evening, told newsmen that the association is made up of distinguish and eminent personalities who are private owners, managers or administrators of their various clubs who acts as heads of their clubs.

“I don’t think there is any ambiguity about what the Nigeria Professional Football League Owners stands for,” he told FUBF.

“The club owners association as you rightly put is an association made up of eminent personalities, who are representatives of their various clubs.

“What the association stands for is very clear to the law. We are basically meant to champion the course of the various clubs, so I don’t think there should be any ambiguity about the club owners and what it stands for.

The Supremo of NPFL Side, Nasarawa United also noted that Barrister Rumson Baribote, who claimed that the Club Owners Association is an illegal body also benefitted from the body in the past.

“Ordinarily I wouldn’t have continued with this insignificant argument, but the truth is that the same person that is now calling the association an illegal body was a one time member of the body, not as a private owner, but as the chairman of Bayelsa United FC, when Davidson Owunmi was Chairman of the NPL.

“Baribote is a young lawyer who is just coming up in the profession which can’t be compared to someone like me who have had over thirty years of experience in the law field. He kept talking about Arthur Kwame, Abiola Babes and all of that and he isn’t even aware of what is really going.

“We are in the jet age, not a locomotive age, he is ignorant and doesn’t know that the NPFL Club Owners Association has been registered about six years ago, with all these conditions put into place and we are duly recognised by the law as a body.

“We have a fantastic relationship with the NFF and LMC and they see us as a legitimate body so we are not bothered by what anyone say.

“Baribote should also remember that it was this same body that voted him in as the Chairman of the Nigeria Premier League, so how come the body is illegal now?

“If he says the body is illegal, then he has also contributed to illegality, but that’s not the issue, let them accept reality that we aren’t in the locomotive age but the jet age. We have been functioning as a legal body and doing our duties well. If he feels challenged, then he should go to the court to challenge it,” he concluded.