By Ikedy Isiguzo
WE are making progress in our sports (football), depending on who is compiling the scores and the indices he is using. I take consolations in gains, no matter how minuscule they may seem, though I am prompt to admit too that some of these advances are like the movement of the pendulum – swinging all the time in the same directions.

Do you know how many football matters are in court? If you do not know, you are not to be blamed. The cases are popping up with a frequency that will make you lose count, even if you are not counting threats of more legal action.

Why are there many football cases in court? It will be a matter of conjecture, but my speculation is that it is an indication of the extent of the frustration of stakeholders (that is what they call themselves) with the inequities that have been staged in the name of the game for decades.

Did it have to take this long? It did. Nigerians are patient, expectant that one day they would be beneficiaries of the same skewed system they will not tolerate. If after a long wait and those who are in the offices decide to convert it to theirs (and their proxies’) the only option left is the courts.
When I last checked, the following cases were in court:

Two companies were squabbling over the rights to sponsorship of the Nigeria Professional League. Each time you hear the matter is resolved, or about to be resolved, it takes a more determined shot at further entanglement. The league is imperilled, football in Nigeria has descended into the sort of coma that many never imagined.

Last September 6, Justice Okon Abang of the Federal High Court, Lagos , annulled the August 26 elections of the Nigeria Football Association, saying it was held against his order stopping the elections. The annulment was at the instance of the players’ union. A truce was hammered together when FIFA threw Nigeria out of international football. It did not take time before the monsters were out again.

On January 19, the players’ union was back in court to complain that the federation failed to keep to its side of the bargain. The matter is still pending and technically, there is no legal leadership of the Nigeria Football Association. The board members and FIFA representative are already in contempt of the court.

Where is FIFA in all these? Is FIFA now too scared to start making noise about banning Nigeria ? Have Nigerians seen the imperative of running our football from Zurich instead of ensuring excellence in the management of the game?

FIFA has not served us well at all. It is at the centre of the confusion in our football. We have arrived at the dangerous point I anticipated years ago. FIFA does not need Nigeria . It has also emerged that Nigeria needs FIFA mostly for cover as some mischief_makers run to it for cover, when they have finished misusing football in Nigeria .

These litigations will not get our football very far, but they will break grounds for the freedom that the game needs from the shackles of those who have held it captive. If people were listening, there would have been no need for these types of case. They will continue until people submit to the superiority of arguments that football is for the people, not some people and that without the people, the game will be in coma, as it has for years.

Interventions, proposed, mainly have been laced with deceit. If someone wants to get all the cases out of court, what is he proposing? Has he considered the gross violations of the NFA constitution, on which the elections held? We are too steeped in deceit that we think it is the only way to proceed.

Soon, cases will land in the courts of some football_loving judge who will wonder loudly, “What is truly wrong with our football?” He is likely to be told, “The ball is in your court, my lord”. I just think that with the number of football_loving lawyers around, more than 100,000 of them, we still do not have enough football cases in court.

Uche Didn’t kill Self

A BIT of relief to hear that Uche Okafor did not commit suicide. So who killed him? Why was the police in a hurry to draw a conclusion without investigations? It is still important to know who committed this crime that almost stained the image Uche spent years building. The criminal threw millions of people across the world into mourning for a man who impacted their lives in different ways.