Nigeria: Obaseki Resigns From NFF Appeals Committee

Leadership (Abuja)

Bassey Ekpo Bassey

26 May 2011

Abuja — Although frantic efforts were made within the football family to resolve the crack within football stakeholders, another bombshell was dropped yesterday when Chief Oyuki Obaski made available a letter of his resignation from the Nigeria Football Federation appeals committee.

In a strongly worded letter to the secretary general of the football federation, he hinged his reason for resignation on the level of inconsistency at play in the federation.

He described it as the major reason why the nation’s football has not done relatively well in spite of the resources that are heaped on it at the tax payer’s expense.

He said the reason the Nigerian Premier League (NPL) is not doing well was because it has not enjoyed any form of government grant and is being pushed to become a department of the Nigerian Football Federation.

Obaseki said he cannot continue because, the NFF particularly Alhaji Aminu Maigari, and the NSC, specifically, the minister of sports and chairman, National Sports Commission, Prof. Tahoheed Adedoja pressurised, harassed and intimidated the NPL board and its congress to accept N350m in lieu of the agreed contractual rights of Globacom sponsorship for the 2009/2010 season, thereby, conniving to ruin the NPL which has attained the 1st position in Africa and 23rd in the world.

Obaseki cried the title sponsorship tussle is killing the league, “I am sad that the NPL has been murdered given the fact that it has no sponsor today, and the title sponsorship tussle is in a legal high way with no green light in sight. Only God knows when a title sponsor will arrive as the league is devalued and de-capped for any potential sponsor or sponsors.”

He said having helped to build the NPL, he cannot be part of the system that is seeking to destroy it.” It is an affront for me as a pioneer chairman of the NPL to continue to be part of a system that regularly seeks to destroy a home that I have supervised in building. I cannot understand why people elected or appointed at the helm of football affairs in Nigeria can sell out the NPL for nothing.”

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