By Ikeddy Isiguzo
SOMEONE once said that when nothing should be done about something, the best solution was a committee. This generalisation is unfair to committees that work, but captures the Nigeria Football Association’s 14 committees for the 2010 World Cup.

Calls that the President should halt this massive waste of resources entailed failed to note the purpose of the project.
We fail to give the NFA Board some credit. The Board thinks, it even has strategists.

The 14-committee structure for the World Cup, unprecedented is also an innovative electoral ploy. The NFA is wasting national resources to ensure retention of the Board that has done so much to halt the growth of football.

Chaos runs through the membership of the committees, signifying most importantly that the NFA in 2010 does not have a membership.

There are instances where committee members were referred to by their positions in the State FAs. The NFA does not know them by name for several reasons, including that the positions are disputed in most States.
Let us examine the committees and their roles.

Main Organising Committee
Its major job would be managing the egos of the more than 200-member delegation. FIFA is bound to give the NFA an award for this achievement.

The committee handles logistics (money to you). Its offices would never be short of people complaining about denied entitlements.
Accommodation
The role of this committee would be to gather materials to prove, during any probe that Hampshire Hotel would have been better abode for the Eagles. The $125,000 fine on Hampshire must be justified. Moreover only Nigerians can make beds for Nigerians.

Media
The task of justifying another term for the Board is more important than the 2010 World Cup. At the 2008 Nations Cup in Ghana , NFA President Sani Lulu had his posters pasted at various places. When the Senate Sports Committee probed the disaster in Ghana , he could not explain this action maybe because there was no Media Committee in Ghana .
Consultative

Sounds like some village shrine where only whispers are permitted. There would be too many interests to consult.
Protocol

Who would open and shut doors for all the illustrious and illustrated personalities(as Timothy Mofolorunso Aluko, rest him, would call them)?

Security
The global challenges are obvious. Some Israelis survived the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre because Israeli security accompanied them.

Technical
It will produce reports nobody would read. If it produced no report, nobody would notice.

Transport
Vehicles in south Africa are different from ours. This group would study them, learn the bus routes and teach the motley Nigerian crowd. It may have to hire aircrafts to get Nigerians to games and meetings on time after their hectic activities.
Marketing
Someone is selling nothing.
Finance
Allowances have to be paid discretely, discretionally, in line with undertakings to vote for the right candidates at the elections. Delegates must understand that their votes determine their allowances. Watch out for the tales of allowance woes.

Accreditation
When you arrive without accreditation, you need help, but someone has warehoused free World Cup tickets and you would be glad when he sells them to you below street prices.

Observation/Study Group
It monitors delegates and their inclinations, all for the election.

Catering
Man must chop. Just to warn that we cannot fetch firewood in South Africa casting doubts over our ability to reproduce that unique Nigeria taste for our players’ foreign palates.

Medical
It will spend more treating fatigue from shopping and frolics than football.
We cannot totally accuse the NFA of imprudence. It had no committees for Players’ Welfare, Mobilisation, Intelligence, Relations With Other FAs, Information Communication Technology, FIFA Liaison, Weather Monitoring (or Climate Change), Women At The World Cup, Shopping, Tourism, Courtesy Calls, Sight Seeing and Hospitality.

The post-World Cup must ask why there were only 14 committees when at least 23 more were required to reflect the 36 States and Abuja . If the NFA had 37 committees, it would have met the constitutional provision on the parity of States  and each State FA would have had its Chairman heading a committee.

PS: I wish the Eagles well as they play against Argentina tomorrow.
No Time For Football

THE Gulder Ultimate Five-Aside Football final held June 5 at the NIS Gymnasium of the National Stadium Lagos. There was no official of the Nigeria Football Association in sight. I heard the NFA mobilised everyone who was someone in its hierarchy to Cote d’Ivoire where the Falcons were playing. Did backing the Falcons have to cause neglect another side of national football?

FIFA invited Nigeria to the inaugural Five Aside Championship in 1987. Since then we have fallen out of reckoning and there is no Five Aside contests in the national calendar.

Once an organisation is foreign-minded to the point that it neglects its origins, its demise is imminent. The trip to Cote d’Ivoire is another instance of the greed that rules the NFA. If its officials were in Lagos , it would most likely be a one day trip with benefits that would be a trickle compared with the days it takes to get to Abidjan , acclimatise, play the game and reacclimatise.

Congrats, Eziuche
MANY roads lead to Igberre in Abia State as my brother Eziuche Ubani, Member House of Representatives, goes through his traditional wedding rites tomorrow. May the bliss endure.
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