By Patrick Omorodion
If there is anyone that is qualified to run the affairs of the Nigeria Football Association, NFA, Chief Patrick Olusegun Odegbami (MON) is unarguably one of them.

He has not only played the game, he has administered it at some point and now runs a sports school where young footballers are groomed.

His passion and concern for the development of the game pushed him into making contact with the Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC which at the time was equally thinking about helping to nurture young people in so many areas of human endeavour including sports.

Big Seg, as Chief Odegbami is fondly called, struck a good rhythm with the oil conglomerate and the annual Shell Cup for All Nigeria Secondary Schools Football Championship was founded.

That project has run for over 10 years, churning out young talents who have gone ahead to represent the country at various levels of football. It did not only produce young players, it also provided jobs for many ex players as coaches or administrators of the game.

After the Shell Cup effort, the former Green Eagles captain has gone ahead to set up a sports school in his Wasimi home town in Ogun State. He writes weekly on the pages of newspapers how sports and football in particular could be developed. So he is many things in one.

However, each time he tries to get into the NFA after a brief spell there some years ago, to help implement what he talks and writes about, some cabal who have held football in the country down for many years, erect stumbling blocks on his way.

For the 2010 NFA election, booby traps were set by the incumbent board through manipulation of the Statutes which was kept from the public eye until very late. Chief Odegbami will take none of it and protested to the various bodies concerned about the game’s administration including FIFA.

His cries were ignored by all, surprisingly FIFA inclusive. Some latter day apostles of free and fair election did not join forces with him to help right the wrong and free football from the cabal, hoping that they could benefit from the fraud until they too were shocked out by the mafia too.

Some Nigerians have said that the former Chairman of the Nigeria Institute of Sports Board is fighting because he wants to become the NFA Chairman. He has however laughed it off stressing that it is not all about himself but a good revolution that would for the first time put the country’s football on the right path.
“It is no true that I am fighting because I want to be the NFA Chairman, far from it.

I just want the right things to be done. Let the right people who would emerge from a legal process be there. Let elections be done from the local government level through the states where the delegates will emerge from. That is all I am fighting for. I don’t necessarily have to be the Chairman,” he said.

Apart from leading some ex footballers to protest in Abuja before the purported election, Chief Odegbami has also vowed “to take FIFA to the International Court of Arbitration because the world body seem to have been corrupted by some Nigerians and they keep interfering in the affairs of an affiliate body which is against their own statutes.”

On the annulment of the August 26 election that returned Alhaji Aminu Maigari which he withdrew from, Chief Odegbami said he was not surprised by the High Court judgment because “Nigeria is bigger than anybody and the laws of the land must be obeyed at all times. As a law abiding citizen, I didn’t want to be part of any illegality hence I withdrew. I knew it was going to come to this,” he said.