By Richard Animam
It was a celebration of some sort when news filtered into town that the controversial NFA elections has been annulled by a Federal High Court sitting in Lagos on Monday afternoon.

Prior to the judgment handed down by Justice Okon Abang in Lagos, members of the NFA had paid deaf ears to two court orders stopping the elections.

The elections, which ushered in Aminu Maigari and a new board, were held in defiance of court orders, with the electoral committee claiming they were served no court processes.

Immediately after the elections, Port Harcourt based lawyer and former Green Eagles winger Barrister Adokie Amiesimaka cried out, calling the elections a charade and called on the court to annul the election and arrest all those involved in the election for contempt of court.

Last Monday, after Justice Abang’s annulment, Saturday Sports reached out to Amiesimaka again and he praised the Federal High Court judge in Lagos for what he called a wonderful decision.

Hear Amiesimaka “ I have always spoken about the NFA 2004 act which metamorphosed from the Decree 101 of 1991-92 under the Babangida regime and according to that act, the NFA is a statutory body recognised by law and not the NFF.

By law the NFA is subject to the laws of this country and that act stipulates that the NFA is a legal entity which can sue and be sued.

All those charade about FIFA statutes and about the NFA not being subject to the laws of Nigeria is absolute nonsense.

The NFA is subject to the laws of this land, therefore if a court of competent jurisdiction makes an order on the NFA, they have no choice but to obey the order or they will stand in contempt of court and I believe that is what is happening and I am in support of it.

It is time, we got our acts together. Enough of these deceits. There is legislation in this country that is binding on the NFA.

If the NFA wants to act under its FIFA approved statutes, then let the Sports Minister, the Sports Ministry and the Federal government hands off the NFA and let them operate on their own and be properly run under FIFA approved statutes.

Let us have a properly constituted National Sports Commission, that will be a professional body with a chairman, a tenure of say four years, that can partner the NFA and that would be development oriented.

That has always been my argument. Let us incorporate the NFA as a company limited by guarantee, let its membership be open to the public and private sectors, that is how it is done. That way, NFA can get government assistance but does not have to be driven by government.

That way NFA can now be accountable, they can now be composed of credible persons that can attract corporate sponsorship. But things are not done here like that because there are certain people benefiting privately from the government-NFA relationship as it is now. That is the problem.

Our representative in CAF and FIFA is not helping us. He is not there for himself but for Nigeria.
It is not enough for us to ask for little changes in the NFA, we should go beyond that and ask for a repeal of the NFA act or get it amended.

Let us insist that the NFA be registered as a company limited by guarantee and let us also insist that we have quality representation not only at the national level but the states and local government levels as well. If we do these, the sky will be our limit but as it is now, we are just going round in a vicious circle.