Tunisia exposes Nigerians Feeding on Football

Though overzealous in his love for the national football teams, Nduka Irabor will defiantly be torn between either shedding tears or rejoicing last Sunday after South African referee, Bennett Daniel Frazier blew the final whistle to signal the end of the 2010 FIFA World Cup qualifying match between Nigeria and Tunisia at the National Stadium, Abuja.

The match, which ended 2-2, put Nigeria’s chance of qualifying for the World Cup in jeopardy. Tunisia now tops the group with eight points, with Nigeria six. Both have two matches left to play against the same opposition, Kenya and Mozambique.

The immediate cause of the shoddy performances are the coaches and the players, but its roots date back to 2005, when the hawks in the nation’s sports circle annulled a free and fair election and installed the present board.

2005 Election

In 2005, Irabor conducted the fairest and freest election in the history of Nigerian football. The election returned Ibrahim Galadima as chairman of the Nigeria Football Association (NFA) as it was then known, before the present board changed it to Federation. Galadima got 42 votes and his only challenger, Taiwo Ogunjobi, secured 24 votes. Three other candidates who were to stand in the elections - Segun Odegbami, Lumumba Ade and Sani Lulu - all left Kano before the votes were cast.

Galadima was congratulated by FIFA’s deputy secretary-general, Jerome Champagne after his re-election.

Irabor said then: “I must congratulate everyone who made this (election) a huge success. So far the appeal committee has got one appeal but we are yet to look into it,”

But the hawks who had been milking football for decades, and wanted to continue, convinced the then Minister of Sports, Samaila Sambawa, that Galadima could not be chairman and that their anointed son was Abdulahi Sani Lulu. Thus began clandestine moves to annul the election. Sambawa later declared that the election could not be valid because Amos Adamu, a member of FIFA and CAF executives was not present in Kano. Because of Adamu’s absence, Sambawa said he doubted whether the election was free and fair.

Adamu’s position

Adamu had claimed that he stayed away from Kano because of security reports from the state police commissioner: “On the eve of the congress and elections, I was on phone with Galadima and Irabor (Chairman, NFA Electoral Committee) and I told them about my position and the fact that I had seen the security reports from the police in Kano.”

But Adamu was part of the so called stakeholders meeting, which held in Abuja the same day. “I know it is my responsibility to ensure that things do not get out of hand; that was why I was part of the Ibro meeting (the hotel where the stakeholders met in Abuja). As an observer I also monitored the Kano elections from Abuja as I was with Irabor on phone several times,” he said.

With Adamu and Fanny Amun, the then Secretary General of the NFA as foot soldiers, Sambawa and the stakeholders succeeded in getting then FIFA Secretary General, Urs Linsi, to their side.

Linsi overruled the earlier FIFA decision to recognise Galadima’s election and called for another one. The new election organised and supervised by the government ushered in the Lulu-led board and thus began a reign of maladministration and mismanagement, which led to many crises and scandals, the latest, which happened last Sunday, is threatening the country’s dream of playing at the World Cup.

Amun’s revelation

Things started going wrong early for the new board. Amun, who worked with the likes of Amanze Uchegbulam to ensure that Galadima was removed, claimed that Adamu promised he (Amun) would continue as scribe of the NFF under Lulu. But the promise was not fulfilled as Amos Adamu preferred his man Friday and long time friend, Bolaji Ojo-Oba, for that position.

Immediately Lulu took over, Amun was dumped and Ojo-Oba was named as the new scribe. Used and dumped, Amun decided to reveal all.

At a press conference, he revealed how the ministry and Adamu used him to get Galadima out of office and later dumped him. Amun said Galadima clearly won the election and that he has since apologised to him.

He displayed a text message from Uchegbulam (current vice president of the board) promising him that if Galadima was removed, the post of Secretary-General would be his.

“Adamu is the unseen hand troubling Nigerian sports. He is a ghost. Adamu told me tissues of lies when I was secretary general of the NFA. When we were in Egypt for the 2006 African Nations Cup, Adamu squealed into my ears that he was going to be named the director of sports, and I asked him: ‘Sir, what would be my fate? He assured me that I would be retained.

“When we came back home, a journalist told me that Adamu said he would replace me with Bolaji Ojo-Oba and when I confronted him with the allegation, he denied it but we all know who the secretary general is. Adamu plays chess game with everybody. The crisis that is bedevilling the NFA/NFL and other clubs has its genesis from Adamu. He is a ghost. He’s the unseen hand.

“Sports in Nigeria have no problem. The problem of sports in Nigeria is Adamu. I must confess that the long crisis in the NFA emanates from the ‘Ghost’. I sincerely apologise to former NFA Chairman, Ibrahim Galadima. History will vindicate him. He’s the most honest man I have ever met. The fact remains that my hands were tied during the imbroglio,” Amun said.

Adamu’s response

Adamu, through Ademola Olajire, NFF’s spokesman, debunked Amun’s claim, noting that the former Golden Eaglets coach never qualified to be appointed Secretary of the FA. Olajire said that Amun even got that far in the NFA because the man he was accusing of destroying Nigerian football helped him.

With Amun out of the way, a board that promised to develop Nigerian football and give us the World Cup ticket began another round of fighting, this time, over how to share the booty.

Singabele’s allegations

Signs that the board was only interested in what it could get from the NFF emerged early when Peter Singabele, a member of the board alleged that only Lulu and his kitchen cabinet were getting all the trips and estacodes that go with them. When public outcry in the media failed to achieve the desired result, Singabele petitioned the National Assembly.

Thereafter, the board got enmeshed in many crises with the Nigeria Professional League board over sponsorship money and the commission that was to accrue from it and the appointment of officials for league matches.

Apart from winning the pre-Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) FIFA U-17 Cadet Championship in South Korea in 2007, the board has recorded only scandals and the worst performances by the Nigerian national teams have been witnessed during its reign.

Vogts contract

The board’s contract with German coach Berti Vogts was a big embarrassment to the nation. The contract not only gave the German unimaginable power, he was doing his coaching job from Germany, and coming to Nigeria only few days before Eagles matches.

Before Lulu and his board, the Super Eagles were called Bronze Eagles, having won bronze in Mali 2002, Egypt 2004 and Tunisia 2006. But, under Lulu, things got worse, with Nigeria losing to ten-man Ghana in the quarter-final of the 2008 Nation’s Cup.

Because of the crazy contract they signed with Vogts, the nation had to pay the German a lot of money, even after failling to win the Nation’s Cup.

Amodu as coach

In shopping for Vogts replacement, the board did not look far. A contractor with the board, who is also a close associate of Amodu, introduced the coach to Lulu and his team.

The board knew that selling Amodu to Nigerians will be difficult because he performed below average at both Sharks of Port Harcourt and Nassarawa FC his last two places of work. To beat this rap, the board got some sports journalists to back Amodu, who was Adamu’s choice.

When a small section of the sporting press, who did not vote for Amodu complained about his performances in his first three games, which shows that he clearly lacked what it takes to perform as a coach at the highest level, Lulu and others ignored their calls and Amodu’s ‘boys’ in the press called them detractors or enemies of progress.

Winning president

Lulu changed his alias to winning president, or 18 out of 18, in reference to the 18 points Nigeria secured from six matches Eagles played in the first round of the World Cup qualifiers.

Off the field, the harvest of scandals continues, from the failure of the MRI test by the U-17 team for the FIFA WYC that the country is hosting to the disappearance of $400,000 and other money related scandals, nobody cares about football development or youth programme. It is indeed a season of grabbing and everybody wants to grab as much as they could.

Sponsors

While the number of sponsors continues to increase, the decline in football continues. We don’t have a youth programme and there is no functional technical department. In this age and time, we don’t have website for national football federation.

What we saw on Sunday against Tunisia is a reflection of the poor leadership in NFF and unfortunately, the decline in football is set to continue, unless the present board is sacked and a new set of managers are put in place to reposition our football. There is no transparency in marketing and finances.

Would Irabor be happy that the Tunisian match has helped in exposing the Lulu led board as consisting of Nigerians feeding fat on football, probably yes, probably no, but one thing is certain Irabor, like millions of Nigerians at home and abroad will be very sad that our destiny is no longer in our hands but in the hands of Mozambique and Kenya, two nations with poor football pedigree.

What an irony. But, if we had visionary leaders managing our sports, we would probably not have been where we are today.