As the crisis rocking football administration in Nigeria gives stakeholders sleepless nights, the management of Stationery Stores Football Club (SSFC) of Lagos has sued for peace.
Dr. Tammy Danagogo
Since after the World Cup in Brazil in July, the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has been embroiled in one form of crisis or another. The world football governing body, FIFA, had threatened to sanction Nigeria for government’s interference in football administration.
And just last Monday, the League Management Company (LMC) was suspended by the Chris Giwa-led NFF for sabotaging the league matches on match day 26, while setting up a six-man committee to oversee the running of the Nigeria Premier League matches till the end of the season.
In a statement made available to TheNiche, the club’s management said, as the oldest surviving club in Nigeria, Stores is saddened by the current situation with the leadership and administration of the beautiful game in the country.
“We, the private clubs, are already endangered species, and the current situation will only serve to accelerate our extinction.
“A situation where the Challenge Cup, the oldest cup competition in Nigeria, is not held and all league matches are put on hold does not speak well for the development and commercial aspect of the game.
“Our football league has seen resurgence with the advent of the League Management Company, a very positive development that is now attracting significant commercial interest. This has also encouraged private club owners and sponsors to get involved,” the club stated.
According to the management, a Nigerian football icon, Israel Adebajo, who founded the club in 1958, and his contemporaries were selfless patriots who pooled their personal resources to fund the development of the game in the 50s and 60s.
The club added: “We will like to appeal to the leadership and administrators of football to sheathe their swords and imbibe the selfless spirit of our founder and his contemporaries by finding credible football elders to arbitrate and negotiate a settlement privately.
“The events playing out in the public and the media are definitely not for the good of the game. Finally, we will like to appeal to Mr. President to begin the process of privatising both the NFF and NFA, as he had successfully done with NEPA.”
Meanwhile, the chairman of the National Sports Commission (NSC) and Minister of Sports, Tamuno Danagogo, has assured all football stakeholders that the body is doing everything to ensure that peace returns to the NFF.
According to Dr. Danagogo, the NSC is still studying the situation and “at the appropriate time, we will say something about it for our football to move forward”.
He added: “Already, I have started calling the parties involved in the dispute to know their grievances and find a way out of the crisis because it is not healthy for the development of our football.”
Meanwhile, Giwa, who claims to have been elected NFF president, was on Friday quizzed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
He was whisked away from his Abuja home by EFCC operatives to answer to the banking transactions of one of his associates.
TheNiche gathered that the associate’s banking transactions between January and June this year were put at N300,000; but between June and August, the transactions had skyrocketed to N250 million.
EFCC has also ordered 19 other persons involved in the transaction to appear before it on Monday.
