‘Fire on the mountain, run, run, run, run’ – NFA elections

Segun Odegbami

I am writing on this issue again out of a sense of responsibility to the game that has dominated my activities through most of my years on earth.

I believe that if the elections into the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, are held today, I have a good idea who the winner will be. I am almost certain about the long list of persons who would be left frustrated at the end of it all when the reality dawns on them on the futility of their ambition to become President through the present process.

The next President of the NFF would have come without question from one of the State FA Chairmen. Thereafter, that constituency would have continued their stranglehold on Nigerian football and its administration, something that has not augured well for the game during this outgoing regime.

Whilst many contestants will be busy counting their losses, on the other side of the aisle they will find a group pumping hands, hugging and kissing each other in celebration of an assured victory once again, having succeeded in cowing the government and the people of Nigeria into submission, making them surrender their most valuable sports property to the shenanigans of puppeteers manipulating the system of elections.

Without fixing that system and process, the crisis during national sports federations elections, and the resort to the civil courts for justice, will not end. The crisis of the past two decades are clear confirmation.

Crisis-ridden elections have become the norm, a well-established ‘game’ played every time the elections into the board of the Nigeria Football Association are to be carried out. They follow the same pattern – complaints by aggrieved stakeholders, litigation in Civil courts, Sports Ministry’s intervention, and