NFF crisis: Our task’s reformatory, not reconciliatory — Galadima
ON MAY 22, 20161:14
Nigeria Football Association, NFA Chairman, Alhaji Ibrahim Galadima has said the 7-man committee on the NFF set up by Youth and Sports Minister, Barristwer Solomon Dalung which he heads is a reformatory rather than a reconciliatory committee as most Nigerians think. *Vice President of the Nigeria Football Federation, Shehu Dikko (l), NFF President, Amaju Pinnick (r) with the new FIFA Secretary General, Fatma Samba Diouf Samoura after a breakfast meeting, in Abuja on Thursday. Speaking on telephone from his base in Kano yesterday, Alhaji Galadima disclosed that rather than reconcile any group of people in the football family, he and his colleagues on the committee are saddled with the responsibility of seeking ways to reform football administration in Nigeria so as to be in tune with the rest of the world.
“Most Nigerians have been saying that our committee is for reconciliation. It is not true, we were given the task to map out a way forward for our football and we are almost winding up our job. We are at the binding stage and just waiting for the go-ahead from the minister to submit the report any time from next week. We had to talk to a lot of stakeholders including (Amos) Adamu, (Dominic) Oneya, (Aminu) Maigari and Austin Mgolu to give us their opinion on the way forward,” he said.
Continuing, the former chairman of the Kano sub-seat of the FIFA World Youth Championship tagged Nigeria ’99 stressed that the problem with Nigerian football was more of the structure as well as legal. “The problem of our football is that of structure and we have to restructure it, we have to get it right from the local government level through the state to the national level. Until we do it, we will be going round in circles. Legally, we also need to know whether it is NFA or NFF. The committee’s work is timely now that the FIFA president is coming, with the reforms going on in FIFA, we have to follow suit,”Alhaji Galadima stressed. He however, added that their work is more of advisory and “it is left for the minister to implement our recommen-dations or not.”
