World football governing body FIFA has instructed Nigerian sports authorities to execute a phased reform roadmap to address ongoing administrative and governance issues within the country’s football ecosystem with words rife that the ‘vexed’ Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) Act will be repealed.
This much emerged during a fresh round of talks yesterday over the ongoing NFF leadership crisis between the top echelon of the National Sports Commission (NSC) and selected representatives of state’s Football Associations along with representative of players, referees and coaches.
According to a source who attended the meeting, FIFA mandated that all proposed structural changes be divided into short-term, medium-term, and long-term phases.
To ensure compliance, stakeholders are expected to sign a binding Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) ensuring that any incoming administration following future elections remains legally bound to complete the full scope of the reforms.
At yesterday’s meeting with the key stakeholders were the NSC Chairman Shehu Dikko along with the commission’s Director General Bukola Olopade and Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Grassroots Sports Development, Adeyinka Adeboye (Zulu).
On FIFA’s next steps, the source said a FIFA delegation is expected to visit Nigeria within seven to ten days even dismissing reports that a Normalization Committee, along with its membership, had already been decided by the NSC.
He added that FIFA alone determines whether and how a Normalization Committee is constituted, and that FIFA could opt to install a foreign administrator to lead it — funded by FIFA itself — depending on its reading of government’s level of interest in the crisis.
The source said FIFA has also advised that reform of Nigerian football governance be split into short-, medium- and long-term phases, formalised through a signed memorandum of understanding, with whoever wins the NFF presidency obligated to carry through the remaining reforms rather than attempting them all at once.
Central to that process, the source said, is a repeal of the NFF Act to produce what was described as a “clean” law, since the country’s constitutional and statutory basis currently rests with the NFA rather than the NFF.
It was equally gathered that a follow-up session might hold today after a document from the talks was circulated to Congress members to show them the path of the reforms and gauge whether stakeholders are in sync with the on-going engagements.
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