NFA election: Open letter to Gov Oyinlola
By Patrick Omorodion
Dear sir, you may not remember me. However, I have been privileged to meet you face to face when you were the Military Administrator of Lagos State.
Oyinlola
I was a member of the Executive Committee of the Lagos State Chapter of the Sports Writers Association of Nigeria (SWAN) led by then chairman, Tony Ubani who paid you a courtesy visit at your oval office in Alausa in the late 1990s.
As the MILAD then, you were the Grand Patron of our Association and our visit was to solicit your support towards raising funds to buy a bus for the running of the Association.
We planned a Fund Launch but unfortunately you told us that the period of the launch coincided with Okuku Day, which we later learnt was a special day in Okuku land, your home town in Osun State.
Many years afters by the grace of God, you are the elected Executive Governor of Osun State, incidentally the home State of two prominent sons who have contributed in one way or the other to the development of football not only in Osun State but in Nigeria as a whole.
The essence of this letter is to bring to your notice the happenings in the Osun State Football Association as it affects the election into the Board of the Nigeria Football Association, NFA, a body that manages the game that unites us more as a people than any other aspect of our national life.
You must be aware that President Goodluck Jonathan was unhappy with the way football was going in Nigeria and told those who manage the game so. He told a select group of Nigerians how he was booed at the Abuja National Stadium during a match there.
Every effort was put to ensure that Nigeria did not miss out of the first World Cup on African soil. Nigeria’s Super Eagles eventually qualified, not as a result of the administrative wizardry of the football managers though.
Government gave money, huge one at that, to ensure that the players lacked nothing before and during the competition. It is on record that the management of the NFA muddled up things and eventually the Eagles fumbled out of the World Cup.
When President Jonathan through the sports minister, Alhaji Ibrahim Bio saw the way things were going askew in South Africa, he ordered the top echelon of the NFA to stop election campaigns and face the business of the World Cup for which government put down a whopping N900 million.
What did the president get in return, a slap on the face as he was reported to be interfering in the same football which government funds. Yes a slap, because if the minister was his eyes in South Africa and issues a directive and was reported to FIFA, then it was the president who was reported.
All these led to the government’s ban of the Eagles from FIFA competitions, FIFA’s threat of ban on Nigeria and the unbanning of the Eagles again. FIFA was glad when the government rescinded its decision, it added that those who have corruption charges are on their own and should face it.
That resulted in the tsunami blowing at the NFA and one of those caught in the web is a son of Osun state, Chief Taiwo Ogunjobi. After Ogunjobi was impeached alongside his colleagues, Alhaji Sani Lulu Abdullahi and Chief Amanze Uchegbulam, he came back to Oshogbo and was alleged to have swornthat only his anointed candidate would get the State’s ticket for the NFA election.
And who is the candidate, a local government chairman and politician. So with a politician in the NFA, there is no longer government interference, the same thing Ogunjobi and his ilks accused president Jonathan of?
The sorry side of the whole mess in Osun State is that the man they have sacrificed for Ogunjobi’s interest is Adegboye Onigbinde, a Modakeke High Chief who has contributed more to the development of football in Nigeria than most members in the present Osun FA put together.
Chief Onigbinde was the first indigenous coach who took the Eagles to a Nations Cup final in 1984. He also took the Eagles to their third World Cup in Japan/Korea in 2002, albeit in controversial circumstances, after Shaibu Amodu and Stephen Keshi were sacked.
Chief Onigbinde is a football technician who has been working for CAF and FIFA for years but has been refused recognition back home in Nigeria. Other countries come to him for advice but the NFA are never tired of discrediting him for pointing out their folly.
Chief Onigbinde offered to contest for the NFA election when some prominent Osun State indigenes asked him to do so. Yet, Chief Ogunjobi was alleged to have sworn that the septuagenarian would get into the NFA over his dead body.
Sir, as a neutral man, I know that both Chief Ogunjobi and his anointed candidate cannot help football in Osun State and Nigeria at large more than Chief Onigbinde. So what is the wisdom in shutting Chief Onigbinde out?
What Chief Ogunjobi is doing in Osun State is like ignoring President Jonathan to go to hell, that he(Jonathan) cannot carry out the revolution he wants for Nigerian football. A case of the tail wagging the dog.
Nigeria’s football is run with government money not any individual. I believe too that football is run with government money in Osun State and not any individual. As long as government funds football in Nigeria and Osun State, it should dictate the tune. Fifa ban or not. God bless you and Osun State.
