.A perpetration of illegality – Baribote .There’s no level playing field – Fuludu .September election already decided – Toro BY JACOB AJOM It is one week since the curtains fell on the 2026 FIFA World Cup in New York. Spain deservedly carted away the gold trophy at the expense of a conservative Argentina side. The better side won effortlessly as good football prevailed. For many Nigerians the outcome did not matter much, but the pain of not having been represented by the country’s flagship team, the Super Eagles has remained the sour point of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. A former chairman of the League Management Company, now NPFL, Rumson Victor Baribote said it was unthinkable that Nigeria, the giant of Africa, was absent out of ten countries that represented Africa at the Mundial..”It is something I don’t even want to think about. For a team that once ranked fifth in the whole world, it was embarrassing not to have qualified for the World Cup. It is a shame. It is not something that should be remembered or even thought about.” Baribote is not alone. Former Secretary General of the Nigeria Football Association(now NFF) Alhaji Sani Toro said, “It is unfortunate that we have failed to go to the World Cup in two consecutive editions. Our football has gone down and the government doesn’t seem to have the will to do anything about it.” A former Nigeria international, Edema Fuludu echoed, “Every Nigerian football fan is still bitter that in two consecutive World Cups we did not attend. It shows that we need to do more, apart from just talking. We must work on the talk.” Working the talk, Fuludu insisted, means “the NFF must not go the former round where we just talk about going back to the drawing board when we don’t have a drawing board. Nigeria has to be in the next World Cup.” That means things must change. How does the change come about when the people who are resisting change are still in charge of affairs? Corroborating Fuludu’s fears, Baribote said, “ If we were in a saner clime, those who are at the helm of affairs should have humbly stepped aside honourably and relinquished their positions, but not here.” The bigger worry is that the Nigeria Football Federation has fixed September 26 for its elective congress which will produce a new executive. Almost all members of the present board want to return and campaigns are already in high gear. The campaign slogan of the NFF President Ibrahim Gusau is ‘continuity’ Toro said nothing will change as the September election has already been concluded. “This coming election is already concluded,” he told this writer. “They will only remove one or two people who do not agree with them. So don’t expect any change at the end of the election. The same people will come back.” Asked if he was interested in the forthcoming election, Fukudu laughed it off. “Only a fool will throw his hat into the ring for a fight he knows he cannot win,” he said. “There is no level playing field,” he remarked, adding, “It’s good to be ambitious, but there is no level playing field. Under which platform will I be coming from? You must come from a platform which can give you some votes. Now there is a lot of inequality(imbalance) in the way votes are being given at NFF elections. That is what the players’ Union has been fighting. Let us have a level playing field so that knowledgeable people can willingly go to contest. As it is now, someone like Okocha or Odegbami can only get one vote if they want to contest. For instance, if I am coming from a state FA there is no way I can contest for the Presidency against the incumbent because he is on top of the FAs; where they have 36 votes plus. If I am coming from the players Union I will have only one vote, a coach has only one vote. So where is the fairness in it? That is the problem; no level playing ground. So it is not as if one doesn’t want to be ambitious. There is no fairness in the whole thing. Unless you are a fool, you can’t just throw your hat into the ring because you won’t get the vote required to win”. Baribote assured that something can still be done to correct the imbalance in the voting pattern before the September election. He argued that the real actors who make football possible were being relegated in the running of their own affairs by those he termed as ‘outsiders’. “If you look at a football match,” he began, “who are those that are the real actors on the pitch? The players, the referees and the coaches and here they don’t have the opportunity to manage their own affairs, while those that are not active are the people calling the shots. That is why we are having this problem.” He continued, “out of 44 voting rights, the FAs get 36, with FCT it becomes 37. So, how can one unit produce a president at the expense of the other four? And even the League chairmen that are supposed to be elected, are appointed into office by the NFF board.
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