The Federal Government yesterday waded into the dispute over the Nigeria Football Federation’s (NFF) electoral congress and got the federation’s warring parties to agree that the polls would hold on August 26 in Abuja as scheduled.
The Federal Government also got the electoral committee to agree to accept the candidature of those, who complained that they could not get access to the polls’ forms.
Such complainants include Amanze Uchegbulam, Abel Ehigie, Suleiman Kwande and Mr. Ewa of Bayelsa State.
Secretary to the Federal Government, Pius Anyim, who summoned the warring parties in the NFF to his office in Abuja yesterday, prevailed on the stakeholders to ensure that nothing scuttled Tuesday’s elections.
Anyim’s intervention, sources told The Guardian, was as a result of the crisis that has trailed the electoral congress since the impeachment of Aminu Maigari as NFF president by a faction in the federation’s board.
The crisis rocking the leadership of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has seen the factions in the board fighting over the control of the electoral committee.
The NFF had before the June/July 2014 World Cup fixed the polls for August 26 in Warri, but the trouble that ensued just after Nigeria’s ouster from the Copa Du Mundo put a question mark on the possibility of the electoral congress holding on that date.
Recently, the Mike Umeh-led faction of the NFF shifted the polls to Abuja to hold on the same day, while Maigari and his loyalists insisted that it would hold in Warri.
The Maigari board later postponed the polls quoting world football governing body, FIFA, as source of its power for that action. But the Electoral Committee will hear nothing of such from anybody, insisting that the elective congress will hold on the said date, but now in Abuja.
The electoral committee chairman, Amoni Biambo, accused the NFF of deceiving Nigerians with threats and letters from FIFA, arguing that the world football governing body did not intervene on any member nation’s electoral process.
Biambo on Thursday at the Bolton White Hotel, Abuja, resisted attempts by the NFF General Secretary, Musa Amadu, to prevail on him to stop a media briefing on the electoral procedure.
He refused to accept a letter, which Amadu claimed emanated from FIFA, saying it was unlike FIFA to meddle into the electoral programmes of its affiliate members.
The committee earlier disclosed that it had cleared Mike Umeh, Segun Odegbami and Taiwo Ogunjobi to participate in the August 26 polls, adding that it decided to move the election venue from Warri to Abuja for security reasons.
He noted that the purported extension of election date was false, stressing that both FIFA and CAF had already promised send their officials to monitor the election.
“Having followed due process of the 60 days period before the election into the NFF executive committee; having collected/collated all nomination forms from various interested candidates vying for different positions into the executive committee; having screened all candidates that submitted their nomination forms to the electoral committee, including those forms that were submitted within the grace period; and having published the list of cleared candidates for the election proper, we hereby categorically state that as an independent body that is saddled with the responsibility of conducting election into all arms of the federation, as it is stipulated in the statute of the NFF, that August 26 still remains the proper date for the election,” he said.
Biambo said despite the wrangling in the country’s football house, all “stakeholders should understand that Nigerian football is greater than the ambitions of a single individual or a group of persons in the football house.
“It is unfortunate that they made me the chairman of the electoral committee, but I am not playing anybody’s script for the good of Nigerian football because this is the only thing that gives joy to hundreds of millions of Nigeria.
“Therefore, some few individuals should not kill the joy of Nigerians. They should not tie their stomach to the Glass House. I am bleeding in my heart that most of them do not have a source of income; therefore, they see the leadership of Nigerian football as a do or die affair.
“We should not allow a few ambitious individuals at the Glass House to continue to deceive us that they got this letter from here or there; it is very unlawful to be brandishing such fictitious letters, which they use to intimidate Nigerians in the name of FIFA.” The Guardian
