Clubs vow to resist alleged plot to impose states’ FA chairmen on leagues’ boards

Hold emergency meeting next week

The Nigerian National League (NNL), Nationwide League (NNWL) and Women League Club Owners have threatened to resist an alleged plot by the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) to impose states’ FA chairmen as chairmen and members of the boards of the various leagues.

The NNL and NNWL leagues are the second and third tiers respectively of Nigerian club football.

The NFF recently set up interim management committees to manage the various leagues when their boards expired last year, but the club owners are clamouring for immediate reconstitution of new boards with their members as the administrators.

They alleged that the NFF wants to impose states’ FA chairmen on the boards, which they claimed is contrary to “an agreement we reached with them before the interim management committees were constituted.”

A representative of the Club Owners, who pleaded anonymity, said, “the clubs met in March and resolved that the leagues’ chairmen must come from the clubs.

They also agreed that they would be in charge of everything that happens in the leagues because they know where it pinches them.

“The leagues now are limited liability companies and there is no way outsiders can articulate the affairs of the clubs better than the club owners. But the FA chairmen want to impose themselves on what they don’t know anything about. Their job is to develop football from the grassroots in their states, but they want to overreach themselves.”

Also speaking on the issues, a member of the body, Emmanuel Zira, told The Guardian said the Club Owners will meet on Wednesday, next week to deliberate on the leadership structure of the leagues, as well as try to get the NFF to implement the decisions reached at the league’s 2016 Annual Congress, held in February 2016, at Top Rank Galaxy Hotel, Abuja, where a compromised New Governance Structure was agreed with three NFF representatives.

“It was agreed that the new structured Boards with their members would be put in place before the start of the 2015/16 league season. That was not done and the clubs were impressed upon to commence the season with a firm assurance that it would be done before the mid-season break. The clubs agreed to do that, out of respect for the leadership of the NFF.

“It has come to the knowledge of the leadership of the club owners that the NFF have reneged on their assurances of to put in place the agreed board structure and composition as voted for and approved by the congress of the league at the 2016 annual general congress of the league.”