SENATE President David Bonaventure Achelenu Mark states his convictions emphatically. He can be hyperbolic sometimes, yet he means his words.

His flare up about corruption in football is another instance in which Mark rose up to the occasion, but he failed to realise that having been in the Senate since 1999, he should assume responsibility for some of the failings of the society for which he makes laws.

“The NFF is just the centre of corruption in Nigeria. There is no running away from the fact. We have really failed woefully in football. The corruption there is not just in the financial section. It is even in the selection of players,” Mark said during a plenary session where the Senate decided to investigate corruption in football.

We expected some restraints in the comments of the Senate President. If there would be an investigation, why find the suspects guilty before it starts? How did he arrive at the conclusion that “the NFF was the centre of corruption in Nigeria”? Is it by the amount of money stolen through its operations or by the volume of media space it gets on corruption? For how long has this corruption hub been in operation?

Is corruption in NFF different from corruption in the National Assembly? Possibly, the difference could be that “the selection of players” is not a challenge for the National Assembly.

We support the investigation without the biases already raised. Concerns about the misfortunes of Nigerian football, are largely blamed on mismanagement of resources. An intervention is long overdue.

Nigeria was absent from the 2012 edition of the Africa Nations Cup – a competition where it once had formidable presence. Its performance at the 2010 World Cup was a predictable disgrace after the earlier poor outing at the 2008 Nations Cup.

The active silence of the National Assembly as the Nigeria Football Federation, an illegal body, took over the functions and offices of the Nigeria Football Association, NFA, four years is despicable. All attempts to get the attention of the National Assembly failed.

For a country of millions of football followers, the Senate wants to be seen as feeling the peoples’ pains. However, it massively missed an acknowledgement of its role in the decadence that has hit football, not to talk of sports as a whole.

Did the Senate not keep approving budgets for the NFA, which the NFF spent? Which greater corruption is there than yearly handing out billions of public funds to an illegal body? How did Senate Committees on Sports (since 1999) relate to the football authorities?

The Senate will hopefully provide direction for football – and its committees – through this long-awaited investigation.