Opinion: Is FIFA Ban on Nigeria – Fair or Foul Play? – Chris Okechukwu

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FIFA BAN LOOMS! ISN’T IT TIME WE ARE BANNED? WHY SHOULD WE ALWAYS WAKE UP TO BE TERRORISED BY JOSEPH BLATTER AND CO.? THIS IS MY SUBMISSION ON FIFA’S DISCREPANCIES IN AFRICAN FOOTBALL.
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It was football icon, Pele, who gave football the name – the beautiful game. It was the English, aristocrats of the round leather, who coined the sobriquet; fair play, in the early days of the sport to send a clear signal to participants.

Unlike football, politics is a dirty game, played by men and women full of dirt – players who are fertile in promises, barren in fulfillment. Little surprise we’ve been witnesses to scores of high profile preachers and harbingers of morality implicated in foul deals once they joined the dirty game – politics.

Football is different, or is supposed to be different. Yet the shadows of the filthy game seem more and more to be crowding the green fields of the beautiful game courtesy Joseph ‘Sepp’ Blatter and FIFA, advocates of the phrase; fair play. In a game that is (supposed) to be overseen by umpires who can distinguish between fair and foul: In a sport where participants (players, coaches, administrators etc.) are (believed) to be guaranteed a level-playing ground, equal rights, and justice, FIFA’s ignoble roles and autocratic penchant have tainted the tenets of fair play.

From the controversial awards of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup finals to Russia and Qatar respectively, to Bin Hammam’s unscrupulous life ban, refusal of the FIFA Executive board members to declare their salaries and allowances, etc., Blatter and his cronies have dragged the canon of the beautiful game from the sublime to the ridiculous. Many Blatter apologists will preach that the game is currently in glorious shape. They will pontificate that Blatter has made it possible for the game to reach all the different corners of the world, by awarding Asia and Africa
the World Cup finals in 2002 and 2010.

For that single reason his benefactors and praise-singers will fantasize about what the diminutive Swiss has done for the game, with little regard as to the massive dent he has left on the integrity and reputation of the game, which was once an epitome of forthrightness and justice. When two FIFA executive board members, our own (Nigeria’s) Dr. Amos Adamu and Reynald Temarii of Tahiti were indicted and suspended for offering their votes for sale in the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup finals, Blatter mounted the rostrum, and declared, “Our society is full of devils, and you find them in football.”

What he did not add, however, is that African football is home to most of these devils – more than in any other sport – in any other part of the world. Sadly, the same man, Blatter, who sent the alarm bells ringing about ‘devils in football’, is the pivot of the sleaze that has devastated the beautiful game in Africa.

He has reigned over and allowed corruption to reign supreme at every nook and cranny of African football. Events before, during and after the FIFA World Cup finals in Brazil, underlined the fact that in no other continent is corruption so unbridled than Africa. Nonetheless, Blatter and the FIFA lords have refused to come down on perpetrators paving the way for successive administrators to engage in landslide corruption.

Recollect that few hours before their scheduled departure for the Mundial in Brazil, Samuel Eto’o led Indomitable Lions of Cameroon refused to board the plane until their outstanding World Cup qualifying bonuses were settled. Cameroon, meanwhile, is (CAF president and FIFA vice president) Isaa Hayatou’s country of birth. Hayatou is Blatter’s right hand man. The entire world watched in sheer disbelief as the 2010 World Cup quarter-finalists, Ghana, and their West African counterparts, Super Eagles of Nigeria laid down their tools, and threatened to boycott their matches with Portugal and France respectively, until millions of dollars were ferried from Accra and Abuja to settle their bonuses in cash.

In Nigeria’s case, when the Minister of Sports, Tammy Dangogo, invited the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) ‘aristocrats’ led by its president, Alhaji Aminu Maigari , and tried to find answers to what led to the national embarrassment, FIFA waded in, and brandished their ‘non-interference’ gobbledygook.

It’s pertinent, at this juncture; to look at the wanton destruction FIFA’s non-interference hocus-pocus has visited on the soccer-mad continent. In a special report published by Forum for African Investigative Reporters (FAIR), several accounts of high-scale bribes, manipulation and extortion were unraveled in several African countries. In Kenya, a well documented case proved that some members of the Kenya Football Federation (KFF) breached 12 of the 21 articles of the KFF constitution, stole more than $700,000 (FIFA and KFF funds), manipulated and forged documents to elongate their tenure, refused to produce annual audited accounts for four years. With the damning evidence before it, a high court ruled that the KFF big shots were no longer eligible to continue in office.

FIFA insisted that government should disregard the high court order and reinstate the KFF officials. When a sensational math-fixing case was revealed to a judge in Zimbabwe, none of the indicted officials was prosecuted. Two members of Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA) Henrietta Rushwaya and Jonathan Musavengana, took the laws into their hands, and went on a playing tour of Asia with a club side, Monomatapa, in the guise of Zimbabwe national team. They played two games, which were listed as grade A matches. Notorious gambler and match-fixer, Raja Raj and Musavengana, ZIFA’s programmes officer, sat on the Zimbabwean bench, and called the shots. The players were instructed to lose 1-0 to Thailand, and 6-0 to Syria.

Thereafter, Musavengana was rewarded with hundreds of thousands of dollars, which he shared with ZIFA officials. “Nobody dares touch these corrupt executive members because of FIFA’s non- interference policy,’ one Zimbabwe coach told FAIR. Elsewhere in other parts of Africa, cases of missing money, forged and manipulated accounts, phony transfers, match-fixing scams, age falsification, extortion on transfers/certificates among other vices, feature prominently.

Kenya, Chad, Togo, Botswana, Ethiopia, Madagascar and several other African countries have been banned or suspended under FIFA’s ‘government interference’ regulation. “In many cases, ‘government interference’ is because of gross mismanagement and/or corruption in the national football association,” said Bob Munro, a leading figure in Kenya football. Munro’s assertion is mind-boggling, and tells the story of what obtains in Nigeria football presently.

It is easier for the ‘shakers and movers’ of Nigeria football (NFF officials, club chairmen, secretaries etc.) to gather in Calabar, Warri or Abuja for ‘extra ordinary or ‘emergency’ congress, and quote a section of the FIFA statutes which frowns at taking football matters to law courts, than address the injustice and foul play that footballers, coaches, and other (football) stakeholders have been subjected to, over the decades. Recently, players under the pay-roll of Kaduna United, a Nigerian premier league club, took to the streets to protest non payment of their salaries, bonuses and allowances over a period of twelve months.

That is where the buck stops. Like hundreds of thousands of club/national team players/coaches, who are being owed billions of naira by NFF, State FAs and clubs, the Kaduna United players will never get justice. Just like in Zambia, Benin Republic, Somalia, Nigeria, Namibia etc., from where players, coaches, stewards, hoteliers, airline operators etc. flood Zurich office of FIFA with loads of petitions everyday. These letters end in FIFA’s waste bin, unattended to, ignored. Two prominent Nigerians, whose lives revolve around football, Taiwo Ogunjobi (former NFF secretary general/chairman Osun State FA) and Victor Baribote (ex NFF vice president, ex president, Nigeria Premier League, and president Nembe City FC, a Nigeria Premier League club), among many others, were given bans of ten and fifteen years respectively. Their offence? They had dreams to vie for elective posts in Nigeria football.

Like Hammam, they had their fingers burnt. Like Kaduna United players, they will never be able to take their grievances to any law court. Remember, FIFA prohibits anybody involved in the game from seeking redress in law courts. Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Sports sources have it that Maigari’s board got a monthly subvention of N150M, from August 2010 – August 2014, which translates to N7.2B; N870M to facilitate the 2014 World Cup finals in Brazil; $1M (N170M) Adidas grant for preparation for the 2014 World Cup; $1.5M (N255M) for the 2013 Confederations Cup in Brazil; $8M (N1.53B) for participating in 2010 World Cup finals; $1M (N170M) from the Abdullahi Lulu board for the furnishing of the new NFF secretariat (Sunday Dankaro House); billions of naira from sponsors: Guinness, Adidas, Tom Tom, Glo, etc.; millions of dollars in grants (for football development) from FIFA; millions of dollars from FIFA for participation in age-group competitions etc. Ministry of Sports hierarchy maintain that the Maigari-led board are yet to render account for these sums.

To add insult to injury, in the course of the NFF – Sports Ministry face-off, the NFF headquarters was involved in a bizarre inferno, which consumed the offices of the chief accountant and secretary general. Few days later, Federal government forces moved in to interrogate NFF top shots (arson is an offence punishable by law, even in Switzerland), only to be met with a stern reprimand from Zurich – stop further investigation, or you’re banned from global football. Like Munro posited: “Who suffers most when FIFA places a ban? Sadly, poor innocent clubs, players, coaches, referees, gardeners etc. What judicial or other regulatory process in the world punishes innocent citizens?” From all indications, FIFA beguile African countries as a result of their frailty.

Preying on the dysfunction in African society, where government (made up of desperate vote-seeking politicians) would not want to be held responsible for alienating its citizens from the ‘passion’ of participating in global football, FIFA allow criminality and disorder to fester. Instigators and perpetrators are rarely caught, even less likely to face prosecution. The salient questions are: Is it apposite that a government that doles out billions of naira (tax-payers ‘money) should not demand an account of how the massive sum is/was spent? Are we saying that FIFA or any other organisation have the impetus to order a sovereign state like Nigeria, around, and lecture us on how to recover money that was embezzled by corrupt (Nigerian) citizens?

Are we insinuating that the Directorate of State Security (DSS) and/or the Nigeria Police personnel should fold their arms and allow the burning down of the Glass House to fizzle out, just like that? Are we going to allow Blatter to emasculate our government apparatus simply because we want to play football? How long are we going to condone FIFA’s gambit which makes our football ‘lords’ untouchables, and grants them immunity to perpetuate crime? How long are we going to be held by the jugular by FIFA, who at the slightest impulse, threaten us with sanctions, instead of setting up the right atmosphere to investigate and punish corrupt football officials? Isn’t it time to call FIFA’s bluff, thereby setting a precedent for accountability and transparency in our beautiful game? Isn’t it time to address this FIFA ‘interference’ sentiment once and for all, by sending a letter to Zurich, asking to be excused from football-related activities for two or three years? Within these years, we’ll sit, and map out strategies that’ll restructure our football. Since FIFA and the Court of Arbitration on Sports (CAS) have failed to address incessant corruption and mismanagement of football in Africa, by successive corrupt football administrators, we must take necessary legal steps, which includes going to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) with evidence of financial misappropriation against Maigari and co., joining Blatter as an accomplice.

Blatter can only flex his muscles around Zurich, but he stands no chance in Den Hague. Jean-Marc Bosman, a Belgium professional footballer, frustrated by stringent measures put in place by Blatter’s draconian laws, snubbed CAS, and went to the European Court of Justice. When it started, threats from his club and Blatter’s acolytes did not deter him. After a nerve-cracking legal process that simmered for five years (1990-1995), he got justice.

Today, professional footballers are waxing in the euphoria of what is popularly known as Bosman law – a judgment that granted them right to move to any club of their choice once their subsisting contract expires. If an ordinary individual (Bosman) could do it, Nigeria can. Other Africa nations, who have been milked dry over the decades, by the shenanigans of Blatter’s platoon, can. Faced with an uphill task of rebuilding his nation, in 1963, former US President, John F. Kennedy, issued a clarion call: ‘If not me, who? If not now, when?”

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