With
Donatus Okpe

NFF: Who Casts the First Stone?
I SAW it coming and it came. When Nigeria could not win any of its matches and the national team, the Super Eagles crashed out in the first round of the World Cup fiesta in South Africa, I knew that Alhaji Sani Lulu Abdullahi and some of his lieutenants on the board of Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) are in trouble in a country where selective justice is as profitable as goldmine.
I knew that there would be sacrificing lamb. When the tide does not come your way as fate would arrange it, you pay a price. A populist does not estimate the quantum of his failure until he sees the last person standing. In 1983, the quintessential Umoru Dikko did not know that he was alone in his thought, until he came down to the ground floor of his duplex and discover that the human traffic that once adorn the living room had ceased. With the disconnection of telephone, a ritual during military coup, he needed nobody to tell him that there was a coup. Sani Lulu Abdullahi, the former NFF Chairman did not expect anything short of treachery and equivalent of coup d’etat when the Super Eagles failed to soar. What might surprise him, however, was the presence of fifth columnists and black sheep within NFF who played holier-than-thou act. By now, the soccer administrator does not need a telephone link between him and the late John F. Kennedy to know that “failure is an orphan while success has a thousand of friends.”
The failure of Lulu-led board to go far into the stages of the tournament was not occasioned by few scapegoats. It was an institutional failure which drew its contributors from entire members of NFF, Sports Ministry, Presidential Task Force (PTF) on 2010 World Cup and Super Eagles. Essentially, in what other parts of the world, takes four years to prepare, Nigeria was prepared to fail before the tournament began.
As it is today, only the former Chairman, Sani Lulu, ex-NFF Vice President, Amanze Uchegbulam and the General Secretary, Bolaji Ojo-Oba and the erstwhile Chairman of the Technical Committee, Taiwo Ogunjobi are held responsible for the seemingly unmitigated mess in soccer administration in the country. Whether in or out of court of law, justice has no other pillar to lean on than pillars of the rule of law. Nobody would be out to defend Sani Lulu and his co-travellers in their present travails bordering on allegations of corruption if they have case to answer. But other members of NFF who pull the carpet off Lulu’s feet, are angels while the later is a villain. The Court of Justice is there to look into the merit of the allegations when the Economic and Financial Crime Commission completes its investigation. One question, however, is very fundamental as Nigerians would find out about what went wrong in NFF. At the meeting held at NICON Luxury Hotel, Abuja, where Lulu and three others were fired, only nine members of NFF were there. The impeached NFF officials were accused of being dictatorial, misuse of public funds as well as marginalizing fellow members. Yet the accused were not there to defend themselves. The primacy of the rule of law should have begun with the presence of the accused at the meeting where they were impeached. Sport writers were not told that Sani Lulu and his co-travellers were invited and they failed to come. Invariably, this means that they had their heads barbed in their absence. Those who want to peddle influence and seek fresh pedestal of power over others, rushed to the presidency with a letter purported to have been written to FIFA by NFF officials, alleging that the embattled men were trying to report the Federal Government to the apex soccer body over meddlesomeness.
Three groups worked tirelessly to ensure that Nigeria gets ticket to prosecute the tournament in South Africa. As I mentioned earlier, these groups include NFF, Federal Ministry of Sports and PTF. But as it is now, it is only NFF hitherto led by Igala-born high Chief, Sani Lulu, that is being probed. Even though I am a journalist, I know how bureaucracy works. How can EFCC probe NFF without beaming its searchlight on the Ministry and PTF. Simple knowledge of bureaucracy shows that NFF does not go to the Presidential Villa when the Ministry prepares grounds for allocation of resources for the soccer body. The Federation gets its fund through the Ministry. Ministry officials enjoy retinue of favour when all is well. They are like mother chicken. It doesn’t take custody of the sick chicks. The war between NFF and the Ministry is legendary. As it is today, Lulu and co are scapegoats of what was adjudged as bazaar for all stakeholders. Those who have adjudged themselves as Saints and played to the gallery so that they could be beneficiaries of Lulu’s adversity were among over 600 Nigerian contingents that left for South Africa. Several of them had no business being there. Some of them who are used to Vanity Fair took along their children and girl friends. They drank the most expensive wine brewed by the French. Yet the wasteful outing which sent billions of naira down the drain was blamed on the former three key officials. The nine-man board members that sacked three others, have pontificated in their submission as if they were not part of the merry-go-round in South Africa’s five star hotels.
If the failure of Eagles to soar is blamed on four persons alone, it is tantamount to call a dog a bad name to hang it. Every soccer fan in Nigeria knows that soccer administration is heavily politicized to satisfy the interest of political mentors in Sports Ministry and its parastatals. The politics does not allow talent-hunt. There are budding soccer stars in the grassoots whose talents are untapped because politics in soccer administration favours old horses whose energy had been expended.
I have not seen anybody in the Sports Ministry and NFF who would confidently cast the first stone against the four former key officials as EFCC go through the books of the Federation.
The solution is not found in vilifying Lulu and his co-travellers. Corruption would cease to be recurrent decimal in sports administration when the industry becomes self-reliant. Sport is private-driven business in most countries and the managers of such outfit declare profits and losses annually. If it becomes private enterprise in Nigeria, people will not erect canopies for vanity fair.
As long as conscience remains magnetic compass of man, it is unfair, unjust and morally reprehensible to hold the sacked NFF officials as the only people responsible for mismanagement of Nigerian’s participation in South Africa 2010 World Cup. Nobody among NFF officials who organized Kangaroo meeting to “sanitize” the Federation can lay claim to sainthood in the quest to make fortune at the expense of soccer development. The blame for our present predicament is shared between NFF, Federal Ministry of Sports and the Presidential Task Force. All members of NFF are in the glasshouse and it amounted to miscarriage of Justice as some of them threw stones at others. In no distant time, Nigerians will sift the grains from the chaff. The truth in every joint responsibility as Booker Washington once said is that “you can’t hold a man down without going down with him.”

   Alhaji Sani Lulu


             CRUMB
Unrepentant Kidnappers
IT was when I read about the Gestapo method used to kidnapped four journalists that I realized three of my colleagues who travelled with me to Port-Harcourt for All Nigerian Editors’ Conference in June, 2010, were very lucky. We had a hitch-free journey but we were sandwitched by insecurity between Port-Harcourt and Enugu. Between Aba and Enugu alone, there are hundreds of police road-blocks. Yet ransom-driven kidnappers have their field day when NUJ officials recently met in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State. They kidnapped journalists who include the Chairman of Lagos State Council of Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Comrade Wahab Oba, Zone G Secretary, Adolphus Okonkwo, Council Secretary, Shola Oyeyipo and their driver, Azeez Abdulrauf. They are, as at last weekend, still in the dungeon of the kidnappers. While their families and NUJ can never raise the N200m ransom, the victims are likely to be caught between death and bottomless blue sea.
As I was lamenting the dire fate of my colleagues, the Public Relations Officer of Igalamela LGA called me from Idah to alert me saying the mother of the former NFF President, Sani Lulu, had been kidnapped at 5.30p.m on Monday. The vivacious former NFF boss, is indeed, caught in a tight corner. The kidnappers want him to fight several battles at the same time. He has to contend with EFCC probe which his holier-than-thou colleagues threw on his lapse. He also has to contend with the nightmare of how to get his mother out of the cocoon of kidnappers. Where will Lulu raise N150 million for the kidnappers who may be home-grown bandits? The kidnappers must have been deluded to believe that he brought dollars from South Africa. The aged mother must be hypertensive under such terrific condition. If the sleepy Igala towns and villages are not immuned to bandits of this nature, then the law enforcement agents have more challenges at hand.
As it is, the increasing spate of kidnapping is affirmation of a county in the jaw of insecurity. The Nigerian State has spent more money on the pedestal of security votes. Yet the police cannot give good account of themselves. Nobody has been able to explain how dare-devil assault rifles do get into the nooks and crannies of Nigeria. In a country where bandits are not afraid of being challenged by law enforcement agents, the citizens need assistance of heavenly host. In Nigeria today, individual security as enjoyed by the privileged elite, has taken precedence over collective security. Even as the kidnappers have infiltrated our backyard, the situation in the East where the values of the people hitherto held sacred, had been totally eroded, is terribly worrisome. Abah and its environs have turned everything, including human beings, into articles of trade.
Unless there is commitment and the equipment to combat violent crime of this nature, the people would be at the mercy of criminals.
The Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Ogbonna Onovo must fall back on any device that could retrieve these fear-stricken journalists and the matriarch of Abdullahi family in Idah from the jaws of the kidnappers. Sensible kidnappers should have known that journalists, whose salaries are slavish, have no commercial value.

Oba NUJ Chairman,
Lagos