Toba Owojaiye in Abuja.
The current enviable and blissful run of Bendel Insurance Football Club of Benin City Edo State, in intercontinental and local football games, May hit the rocks if stories emanating from the Nigeria Football House in Abuja should be considered.
This is following the inability of the Edo State Football Association to organise a Congress that would lead to an election of a new board since February 2023, as the tenure of the former board expired in March, and an interim board was instituted.
According to a source in the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) headquarters in Abuja, the capital city of Nigeria, the major problem that has plagued the Edo FA has been the overbearing influence of the state government, which has become a stumbling block in the way of the FA which ordinarily is not a department of the government.
The Edo FA election fixed for the 4th of October was, for the umpteenth time, shifted again on Wednesday when all parties involved were ready. The NFF had dispatched its representative to Benin from Abuja, all the stakeholders and delegates from the 18 local government areas were in Benin, and as members were moving into the venue for the Congress, which was to be held in a military base, the exercise was truncated for the 7th time within a year, as the military personnel manning the gates informed that they had received “an order from above” that the delegates shouldn’t be allowed into the cantonment.
An order investigation was revealed from the state governor’s office.
Explaining the consequences of these truncations since February, our source in NFF, who didn’t want his name to be mentioned, told Truth Live News in Abuja that the NFF will be giving the Edo Football Association, which currently being headed by an experienced administrator, Dr Moses Aghedo an opportunity next week to hold the election finally and if they fail again for whatever reasons, the NFF would make an official report to FIFA through CAF which could attract a ban of Football activities in the state and would affect all the football clubs affiliated to the FA.
He said: “I can authoritatively tell you that Edo State is the only state in Nigeria where the FA has been unable to conduct any Congress and hold elections since February, and this is becoming very worrisome and embarrassing to the NFF president and all lovers of the game from within and around the state”.
“The State will be allowed one more chance to try to do the needful next week, and it’s going to be between the 15th and 14th of this month because the current interim board cannot go beyond October 15, or else it will be running against our statutes and that, of course, will attract a sanction which would certainly take the state football backwards because all the football clubs in the state including Edo (Inneh) Queens FC and Bendel Insurance FC currently representing Nigeria in intercontinental competition will be affected”.
“I don’t know what the interests are, but I can understand that some selfish individuals are wrongly advising the govt, and unfortunately, when the hammer falls, those people won’t be there again.”.
“Football runs itself everywhere in the world without govt interventions. Especially in states where the FAs don’t get allocations or subventions from their state governments. I genuinely don’t care about the politics going on there. In fairness to the governor, we found out that he is not even aware of some of the shenanigans between the sports commission and some people bent on having things done in their own way. Still, I can tell you categorically that when the hammer falls, nobody will be happy, including the governor, whom I know loves football and has done a lot to get Bendel Insurance FC to its enviable stage today, the source, a seasoned football administrator, asserted.
Even more saddening is that the sports commission is being headed by Mr Yusuf Alli, a former Nigerian Athlect and an Olympian who should know better. Still, I don’t know if he has also allowed himself to be engrossed in their dirty politics, which makes the state a laughing stock.
How could you have failed to hold a common state football congress for eight months and an election postponed seven times? Our source queried.