The Nigeria Football Federation has ordered the election committee of the Nigeria Premier League (NPL) to disregard the directive of the chairman National Sports Commission and the minister of sports, Alh Yusuf Suleiman, who ordered the inclusion of all parties including Davidson Owumi and hold the election without Owumi. The federation ordered that Davidson Owumi be excluded from the list of candidates vying for the post of the chairman of the NPL despite the ministerial directive for his inclusion.
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An executive committee member of the federation, Effiong Johnson, stated that the directive to bar Owumi was based on the grounds that a court judgment had stipulated that Davidson Owumi be excluded from the process. “We have ordered the NPL to exclude Davidson Owumi from the election process because, letting him contest would make the federation be in contempt of court. There is nothing malicious in our decision. It is simply a court order. In this regard, we have also informed the election committee to disregard the directive of the chairman of the sports commission.”
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Observers believe the decision of the federation to exclude Owumi from contesting the election will further polarize the football family since it has been grappling with one controversy after the other. The most serious being the decision of the Harrison Jalla-led group sympathetic to Owumi to fight the legitimacy of the composition of the football federation with claims that the current board members do not have the constitutional right to steer the affairs of Nigerian football. The NFF critics also reason that this same board barring Owumi in the guise of court order themselves flouted a court order last year to hold the August 26 election that ushered in the present board.? ?
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Observers feel the federation does not need to dabble into ‘politics’ of this nature that will only end up distracting them from concentrating on qualifying for the forth coming Africa Cup of Nations where the Super Eagles have found themselves in a tight corner.
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