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, Fuludu 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.

“Now the NFF just pick whoever they like and impose him on the clubs as League chairman, Who elected him? I was chairman of the league at the time, I was elected by the clubs.”

Baribote said FIFA recognizes that clubs elect or appoint their own person, not somebody coming to interfere. So, there’s a lot of illegality going on.

“Even in the Nigerian constitution, for you to be president, you must have at least two thirds of votes in a number of states. But in the Nigerian Football Federation, it’s only one unit, which is the state FAs, that elect instead of the collective mandate of all the stakeholders.”

Justifying his objection to the status quo, Baribote said, “Now, let me give you one simple analogy. For you to be a referee in Nigeria, to officiate games, you must have passed through training or a test of the Nigerian Referee Association, to qualify as an NRA member. To be a coach, you must have the minimum qualification of the NIS as a coach and to be a member of the players’ union, you must have played professionally. That is the qualification. Now tell me what qualifies the FA Chairmen? Nothing.”

Fuludu said, the fight to correct the imbalance has been on for long. “Even the Players Union led by Harrison Jalla had to go to court but some of us in the union decided not to go the same route and avoid the courts by talking to some stakeholders and people in the National Sports Commission. The so-called amendments made at the Extraordinary Assembly in Bayelsa were cosmetic. If anything, it shows that they still don’t want to provide a level-playing field. There is no verifiable change.”

We asked if it has become a helpless case? His answer was blunt. “It appears so, unless the government steps in and says, ‘enough of this. Let us have a comprehensive list and let no one threaten us with FIFA, so that people with real interest and good intentions for Nigeria football will come out to contest. Once they are assured of a level playing field, the best candidates will come out to contest”.

Toro who supervised one of the most successful eras of Nigerian football said the situation can only be rectified by the government. The NFF Statutes that appear so lopsided can be amended to reflect fairness and equal representation of stakeholders if the government stands firm. “It is easy to deal with and nobody should threaten us with FIFA sanctions. Unfortunately, the government has not demonstrated enough will to effect the desired change. The chairman of the National Sports Commission, Shehu Dikko said there will be changes but I think only a miracle can bring about this change.”

Baribote declared that the present board of NFF cannot be talking about another election when the election that brought them to power had been declared illegal by the Appeal Court.

Said he, “We shouldn’t be talking about whether they should come back because their being in office alone is illegal. There is a standing order given by the Court of Appeal dated 19th January, 2024 that nullified their election. They filed an appeal and the Court of Appeal on the 29th of September, 2022 gave an interim order when they looked at the propriety of their appeal and on January 19th, 2024, struck out their appeal and further directed the deletion of that appeal number from the court of appeal. Yet they are in office. We have filed contempt proceedings, we have filed for the enforcement of that order. They are still in office. So, you see that there is no legal mandate putting them in office because the election that put them there, in the first place, is still being challenged in the court of Appeal and they want to go ahead with another election because they have no respect for judicial pronouncements and the rule of law.

Like I said, one day a Moses will come that will take us to the Promise Land. So, we are on it, we are not going back. So, ordinarily, in the eyes of the law, they are not even known because their being in office is illegal.” (Saturday Vanguard)

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