From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) Second Vice president, Alhaji Shehu Dikko, has blamed the financial situation affecting the football federation on the slavery sponsorship contract its past administration signed before now.
Speaking to Daily SunSports in an exclusive interview in Abuja, the Chairman, League Management Company (LMC) maintained that the situation had become so bad that the sponsorship fund was no longer enough to prosecute even two Super Eagles matches.
He pointed out that the delay in LMC securing another sponsorship deal was to ensure that it did not go the way of the NFF deals, stressing that he wanted to tarry and secure a deal that will stand the test of time.
Updating Nigerians on the sponsorship deal, Dikko said: “We have worked very hard to put the league on the pedestrian we can pay our bills, sustain ourselves, and prosecute our activities without owing anybody. We don’t have so much money but we manage it well.
“We prosecute projects we can afford. The financial position of the league is stable that we tarry to negotiate good deals for the league. We receive offers daily but we are concerned about building a strong financial base for the league. We don’t want to leave our successors with any serious financial burden.
“You can see the problem we are having at the NFF for example and people don’t understand why NFF is broke. It is not that the board members did not do what they are supposed to do but because somebody years back signed up all the major activities of the NFF involving the 13 national teams, the National, Nationwide and Women league for N380 million.
“Now, that money has become something that could not even do two matches for the Super Eagles, resulting in the financial crisis facing the federation. Somebody signed that contract and as it is now, you cannot cancel it or revoke the contract by telling the sponsor to pay like N2 billion.
“What we did is to wait for the contract to expire but that decision has crippled the federation. At the LMC, we want to ensure that we do a deal that will stand the test of time. We don’t want to make the same mistake made in the past at the NFF level.
“We also inherited such deal at the LMC and it took us a long while to resolve it but we are paying the backlash of that decision. Most of the problems we had in the league were due to sponsorship and the money going into the wrong hands of people that are not even involved in the running of the league.”
“Now we have been able to bring the money back to the clubs, the rightful owner of the league. We are taking our time to ensure that we do the right thing. We receive sponsorship requests daily, but we have to be convinced the deal must stand the test time,” he said.