By Jacob Ajom
Veteran sports journalist, Emeka Inyama has been cleared to run for the chairmanship of the National Professional League by the NFF electoral committee. Inyama will stand for the elections against Stephen Yakubu Gyebgon from Adamawa state.

Speaking in a telephone chat with Sports Vanguard from his base in Abuja, the former executive director of the defunct Sportslink said the national league as presently run could not serve the purpose for which it was created.

Said Inyama, “I want to run for the chairmanship of the National Professional League board because I want to bring my experience to bear and lift its status. I want to repackage the league, create an identity and make it fulfil the objective it was created for as a breeding ground for the premier league clubs and the national teams. All this cannot be achieved if the professional league continues to be run like an amateur league.”

He said, “a product is what you make of it. We have to build the brand , to have its own identity and create its own image and sponsors will come.”

He said he had the experience, the pedigree and the reach to turn things around within one year in office. “I am not making an empty boast. Everybody knows that sports marketing and sponsorship is my speciality, we need somebody with that kind of pedigree, who has contacts that can make things happen for our football and I’m well equipped for the challenge,” Inyama who was General Manager, Marketing of COJA, the organising committee of the 2003 All Africa Games noted with pride.

Continuing, Inyama said club owners should be given a chance to run the professional league because they knew best on how to tackle the problems of the league. “I have been chairman of Abia Warriors for the past five years and I am well informed about the problems of Nigerian football.”

He opined that for equity, justice and balance, chairman of tha national professional league should come from the South East geo-political zone. “I believe that for stability in the polity, the top positions in Nigerian football should be shared among the six zones. North East already have the NFF president, South South should  head the Nigeria Premier League, the National League should go to South East, Amateur League for North West, Women League to North Central while the South West takes the NFF secretary- general,” Inyama said.