By Musa Umar

It is only a keen observer of happenings in and out of the highest football authority in Nigeria that can decipher the motivations and implications of the series of orchestrated and ugly media campaigns against the executive committee and the management of Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) who are less than a year in office.

 In fact, as soon as the NFF under the leadership of Aminu Maigari settles down to the onerous task of charting a positive direction for Nigerian football, its myriad detractors who are hibernating in high government positions and others who are occupying less visible positions out of government have sworn to drag in the mud Maigari and his team and whatever success they are meant to achieve. In particular, the people in the top hierarchy of sports administration in Nigeria are visibly using their privileged positions to tarnish the image of NFF.

Indeed, those who hatch plots against NFF are clearly executing their obnoxious agenda through a battalion of foot soldiers. Indeed, the common denominator among the elements in high and low positions who have made it a point of duty traducing NFF is that all of them have clubs in hand, fighting tooth and nail, just to ensure that the task of restoring the glory of Nigerian football by Maigari and his team is aborted.

The essence of the unfolding serial machinations is simply to deny the new helmsmen at the NFF the opportunity to ‘write their names in gold

My attention has been drawn to the Clandestine warfare being waged against the FIFA  recognised  and democratically elected body in charge of Nigerian football. The war on NFF is declared by those whose duty is to appropriately advise our President. Instead, they have decided to deceive President Goodluck Jonathan.

Going by their intentions and actions, they want Mr. President to take a very wrong decision against NFF. They did it before and they want to do it again. Consequently, any official of  member countries that decides to resort to arbitrariness without following due process should be prepared to incur the wrath of FIFA.

Methinks that after the encounter with FIFA when our dear President Jonathan was forced to reverse himself after withdrawing Nigerian teams from international competitions, he should have learnt one or two lessons. One, he must learn to be very careful not to take rash decisions because the buck always stops at his table. Two, he must also understand the implications of taking decisions without recourse to due process and established principles governing the operations of organisations, national and international, including FIFA.
 
Once again, the advisers of Mr. President on public affairs should have done their homework thoroughly by, at least, going the extra mile to ensure that the sanctity of the person and the office of Mr  President are safeguarded.

But whatever reasons and interests that propel those whose duty it is to give sound counsel to Mr, President  on sports administration in Nigeria, it appears they did not do their work honestly and diligently, especially where our relationship with FIFA and FIFA established protocols is concerned. Otherwise, FIFA would not have smelt a rat over the actions taken by the Nigerian President. 

Eventually, when the face-off between FIFA and Nigeria died down, I thought the least President Goodluck Jonathan should have done afterwards was to route all the culprits that prepared the memos that led to his terrible goof.

However, despite our President’s misadventure in the withdrawal saga, I still strongly believe in the innocence of our unsuspecting leader. I believe that our President was mischievously corralled into such an unfortunate event which caused both personal and collective anguish to the person of the President as well as the generality of Nigerians. As the Hausa would say. ba a mugun sariki sai dai mugun bafade.

However, I was completely flabbergasted over the whole episode and; in particular, over the refusal of President Jonathan to read riot act on the battery of officials in government and those hovering in the corridors of Aso Villa who had collaborated to deceive him and caused Nigeria such a gargantuan national embarrassment.
Instead of clamping down on them, he decided to behave as if that episode did not take place here in Nigeria.

Frankly speaking, if I were in the shoes of President Jonathan, all the top officials of our National Sports Commission/Ministry of Sports who are either directly responsible or who are in the picture of events leading to Nigeria finding itself in that mess, I would have ensured that all of them pay dearly, one way or another, for their ill-motivated advice.

The apparent silence of Mr. President over the misdemeanour of his officials is however sending very wrong signals. The people that should be hiding their faces in shame are now at it again. Of course, they are going back to their old game of blackmail because the President has refused to sanction them the first time. In fact, they think that they have the sympathy  of Mr. President.

These people have totally forgotten that they are responsible for Mr. President’s altercation with FIFA over the withdrawal of Nigeria from international tournaments.

They have also forgotten that they are responsible for causing national embarrassment to Nigeria. They are right now hatching all sorts of plots against the NFF in order to discredit the institution. Snippets of media attacks are systematically being targeted at the person of Aminu Maigari and the entire Management of the NFF despite their selfless efforts to take Nigerian football from the neglect it suffered in recent years to a respectable height.

In fact. any ardent observer of the politics surrounding Nigerian football will readily agree with me that hardly a week passes by without these people planting carefully orchestrated articles and reports that are, for all intents and purposes, misrepresenting issues, facts and reality in one or two major national newspapers and magazines.

What is that intended for? Obviously, it is intended to give a dog bad name in order to hang it. In addition, there are without doubts other sinister motivations on the part of all those forces that are out to destabilize Maigari and his ‘team. Looking at the identity configuration of the major players that are specifically aiming at NFF’s jugular, one cannot help but read ethno-religious, regional and sectional motivations as the drama of the absurd unfolds itself.

As a matter of fact, the intensity of our frustration following the failure to make it to the next round South Africa does not warrant our President to take an action that is ostensibly propelled by the emotional outpouring which emanated from our collective outrage.

The decision of the President  did not key in due process in his response.  In all sincerity, do we heap the blame solely on either the players or the NFF? What about the lapses of other stakeholders that glaringly manifested themselves months before the World Cup season?

A lot of Nigerians have earlier on predicted our poor outing specifically going by the  lackadaisical attitude of our foreign-based players in the run-up to the World Cup. In short, what needed to have been done was a thorough stocktaking on the dwindling fortunes of Nigerian football.

The irresponsibility and unfathomable corruption of our political leadership at various levels of governance have somehow eroded our confidence and, in turn, have affected our input in whatever we do.

And this huge deficit has serious ripple  effects on the disposition of every ordinary Nigerian, including our brothers and sisters in the diaspora.

To this end, we have reached a point in this country when people think that it is no longer profitable to be patriotic or to exercise unalloyed commitment to mother Nigeria. Why is it so? The reason is of course not farfetched. Indeed those entrusted with the responsibility to steer Nigeria in the orbit of glory and greatness have roundly failed in carrying out their duties. Consequently, the generality of Nigerians have become indifferent to doing things that will move our country to greater heights not only in sports but in all other aspects of human endeavour.

Little surprise that even the highest level of commitment we are expecting from our foreign based players is virtually lacking when it comes to playing for Nigeria. We always tend to see a discrepancy between the high degree of commitment exhibited by our players when they play for their professional clubs and their usually wishy-washy performance when it comes to playing for Nigeria.

The difference is always very clear. But is this not part of the greater malady afflicting Nigeria, a kind of existential crises that can only be redressed by a visionary and committed leadership that can ginger and re-energise Nigerians to succeed in their different callings?

Finally, by way of advice to Mr. President, as the momentum of globalisation process increases, international law, treaties, edicts, statutes, charters and protocols are apparently the quintessential ingredients of international relations.

All serious countries must consistently observe their obligations to the global institutions they patronise. Indeed, lack of diligent observance of international charters and protocols can easily turn any nation into a pariah.

The fact that Nigeria is a signatory to these obligations, our leaders must  tread carefully and cautiously or else we will not cease to be the laughing stock of other nations or, at worse, incu r the wrath of ostracization and/or ban from participating in activities organised by different global institutions and platforms which we have duly joined like all other free nations that are aspiring for glory and greatness among the comity of nations.

Again, we will not see an end to national embarrassment through the commissions and omissions of our leaders and their largely incompetent advisers.

•Dr Umar wrote in from Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria