I have followed the discussions around the action of the Federal Government in withdrawing the national teams from international football for two years. I have watched and listened not just as a passionate follower of sport but also as someone whose business is based on sport in part. As a Sponsorship Consulting Company, most of the clients my company works with have built their sponsorship portfolio around sport as the main pillar. Sport is powerful and in Nigeria, football takes a lion share of sponsorship investment in sport. Last year, Connect Marketing, the company where I work, had a Sponsorship Seminar and the theme of the Seminar was 'Beyond Football'.
I have had the opportunity to interact with some of our sport administrators in the course of working with sponsors who are looking at squeezing value out of their investment in sports. Without holding brief for anyone, our sport is in a very bad shape. Playing in the field is like walking through a mine-field and corporates tend to work with companies like ours to try and make some sense of the field. However, while we acknowledge that our sport is in a bad state, we also agree that other sectors of our national life are not exactly in stellar shape. About fifteen years ago, I had written an opinion for the sport magazine published then by Emmanuel Maradas (now working in FIFA) in those days and I had said that as a country, we were naive to believe that we could have the best football set-up while the other sectors of our life were in a sad state.
However, the question is, do I believe that the action of the government is the best way to tackle the situation?
First and foremost, I have read a lot of interviews and press releases from the Sports Minister in the last few days speaking about the sovereignty of the country Nigeria and how FIFA cannot threaten the sovereignty of our dear nation. I think the Minister got it wrong here because the issue of sovereignty is not the issue at play. When you join an Association, you subscribe to the ideals of that association and in this particular case, you subscribe to the articles that forms the foundation of the association. I remember in those days when I was a kid, I joined the Boys' Brigade and they gave us something they called the 'Object of the Boys Brigade' and the anthem. We signed that we would live with those ideals and when anyone went against the ideals, he was suspended or even expelled.
All the members of FIFA have agreed to be bound by the rules and regulations of that association. Anytime one member goes against any of these ideals, that member would be sanctioned. If you do not want to be a member, you can withdraw.
Please note that FIFA is not one of the most transparent organizations in the world. The organization is still surrounded by a lot of scandals and backward thinking. How do you defend an organization that insists that despite the fact that its officials cannot physically monitor a football game fully because of the speed of the game , it will still not subscribe to new technologies to monitor the game to ensure that there is fairness? Blatter wants football to be the same from the village school to the pitch in Maracana. That is not credible! Even in tennis where the Hawk Eye technology is used, it is not used in all tournaments! However, despite all of these failings, an association is an association and the rules are the rules. To think that the rules will be changed because our government officials have discussed with their officials is simply naive.
The key issue here is that there is a blatant lack of accountability within our sports and that is the same with other areas of our lives. This is not an excuse to condone these actions and we surely cannot continue like this. Indeed, the government has a right to withdraw its teams from FIFA competitions but government must think it through and understand that there will be sanctions coming our way. Of course, there are times that you take an action that pays in the long run even when you face some resistance and challenges initially. As long as you have considered all the implications before taking the action. I hope the government's action has been well considered? I hope they know that there are contracts in place between the NFF and its sponsors that details the level of the competitions and the exposure the sponsors will get over the contract period. I hope the government knows that the absence of Nigeria from the scene might actually extend beyond two years?
It is extremely unfair to assume that government has not thought about the multiple implications of such an action and I am not suggesting that they have not. However, beating a retreat on Monday evening, in whatever form, might suggest that we did not think this through.
In conclusion, this administration has a few months to go, our Sports Minister needs to be a Sports Minister, not a football Minister. He needs to be able to advise the government properly on all areas of sport in Nigeria. We have not seen anything to indicate that this is happening.
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