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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
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