House Committee on Sports, NFF and Sports Ministry: A Partnership Nigeria Football Desperately Yearn

By MICHAEL OBASI

It is not often seen that the NFF, her supervisory body, the Sports Ministry and the House Committee on Sports are on the same page, and this has been a major setback in the growth of Nigeria Football over the years.

Nigeria as one of the world’s most naturally talented footballing countries has the capacity to be a leading light when it comes to football development.

But this has been a far cry because of perpetual internal wrangling among the various institutions responsible for the Country’s Football.

In fact, some persons feed on this very often for their own selfish agenda at the expense of genuine growth in the football ecosystem.

But there is always a time for something old to stop and something new to start to engineer a different result.

As a Country it is a new Government in Power expected to be at the helms for the next four years and for Nigeria to fully maximise all that is coming within the next, a cordial relationship is not negotiable between the NFF, the Sports Ministry and two Committees of Sports in the National Assembly.

The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) led by Ibrahim Gusau has lots of barriers to break to be able to satisfy the yearnings of an average football fan on the street.

Top on the list of those barriers are lack of adequate funding and inadequate Sponsorship.

These two barriers are very key to anything the NFF wants to achieve and the Football House has struggled to live up to expectations over the years because of this.

Hence the need for a good partnership to exist amongst the football institutions.

As it is normal in every family there will be times when there will be issues but the ability to iron them out amicably without flexing ego is what will make the difference.

All the various Sporting institutions have their well-stated functions without ambiguity and who says they all cannot carry out these roles without unnecessary friction and Media war.

The Sports Ministry can perform its supervisory role on the NFF and still be a good partner, the same way the National Assembly through both the House Committee on Sports and Senate Committee on Sports can adequately undertake its oversight functions on both the Ministry and the NFF without cold war.

The Chairman House Committee on Sports, Honourable Ekene Adams who is an astute football administrator himself has stated unequivocally that he is determined to partner with both the NFF and the Sports Ministry to revamp Nigeria Football.

And this has been evident so far with its recent activities where it organised a peace parley with the NFF to resolve some of its lingering crises.

The House Committee on Sports has also shown its readiness to partner with the Sports Ministry and the Chairman recently showed this by being one of the first to congratulate the new Sports Minister Senator John Enoh.

*Michael Obasi is one of the media aides to the Chairman, the House Committee on Sports