Sports Minister set to give terms of reference for IMC

League champions, Rivers United, and record title winners, Enyimba, are expected to get the 2022/23 NPFL programme soon after the inauguration of the competition’s Interim Management Committee (IMC).

Sports Minister, Sunday Dare, is to release terms of reference and job description for the Interim Management Committee (IMC), a body he set up recently to manage the Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL).

Dare had shut down the League Management Company (LMC), headed by former board member of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), Shehu Dikko, and set up the IMC. He claimed that the decision was government’s last resort to salvage the country’s football.

The Guardian learnt yesterday that part of the job descriptions to be handed the Gbenga Elegbeleye-led IMC, tomorrow, is to identify monies received by Shehu Dikko and his group at LMC in the past seven years, how they were utilised and also take stock of assets and liabilities of the League.

There have been divided opinion on Dare’s action, with watchers, saying that as a Sports Minister, his duty is to advise the NFF on how to run its affairs, but not to ‘superimpose’ his opinion on them.

On the other hand, some have supported Dare’s bid to clear the ‘rot’ in the football body in the last seven years.

The Sports Minister disclosed recently that the NFF, under President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, has received in excess of N16 billion.

Recall that operatives of the Nigeria Police Force stormed the office of the LMC in Abuja to seal it up.

The IMC, which Dare set up about two weeks ago, will replace the ‘illegal’ LMC headed by Dikko. Before then, the LMC operating licence was said to have been withdrawn by the NFF following a directive from the Sports Ministry.

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