Minister of Youth and Sports, Solomon Dalung, on Thursday, in Abuja announced guidelines for the 2017 National Sports Federations elections.
The guidelines, which were announced at a stakeholders meeting at the National Stadium, Abuja, effectively ruled out some powerful federations presidents ahead of the elections billed for June 9.
Section 3.2 (i) of the guidelines banned presidents and vice presidents of international sports bodies from contesting for president or vice president of federations.
Also, Section 3.2 (ii) states that persons who have served as presidents of federations for two consecutive terms were also not eligible to serve.
The major casualties of the new guidelines, who cannot contest the next elections, are ex-sports minister and Nigeria Tennis Federation boss, Sanusi Ndanusa; IOC member, NOC and Nigeria Volleyball Federation president, Habu Gumel; Nigeria Basketball Federation boss, Tijjani Umar; and President, Athletic Federation of Nigeria, Solomon Ogba.
Others are handball federation boss, Yusuf Dauda; table tennis federation president, Enitan Oshodi, who also serves as vice president of the African tennis body, and several others.
In January, basketball stakeholders had protested an attempt by Umar, who had spent eight years as NBBF boss, to amend the constitution to keep him in office for another term.
The new guidelines by Dalung effectively ruled out Umar and some other presidents, who Dalung described as “emperors”, from vying for the June elections.
The minister also barred government nominees from being part of the boards of federations.
He stated that the nomination of government officials into previous federations contributed to them being populated by “incompetent people.”
“As part of our reforms, starting from the 2017 elections, there will no longer be any government nominee on any federation board,” Dalung stated.
“I believe the absence of government nominees will help guard against incompetent people populating the boards.
“In the past, National Sports Federation Elections had been mired in controversies; with various accusations of manipulation and connivance by the then National Sports Commission.
“We have had cases of imposition of candidates and exclusion of the real stakeholders, thus calling into question the credibility of the entire process.
“This has resulted in many boards having majority of their members with either little or no knowledge of the sport, or even any passion for it. In some cases, federations had been run as personal estates,with impunity and sometimes outright disregard for the Ministry,” he added.
While reeling out more reforms, Dalung added that all the state association chairmen and the 13 board members would now be involved in the voting and election of their federations presidents. Only 13 board members were formerly involved in each federation election.
Dalung added, “The days of handpicking candidates or running a federation like an emperor are gone. We are now going to have federation presidents that have a national outlook.
”You can’t be elected by just 13 people and you write a constitution for over 150 million Nigerians.”
Meanwhile, stakeholders have hailed Dalung for reeling out the new guidelines, saying its a positive step for sports development in the country.
South South representative on the NBBF board, Ahmadu-Kida Musa, said, “What has happened is a dream come true. This is a humble way of people who lead federations to know that they don’t have the best ideas.”
Chairman, Sports Reform Committee, Godwin Kienka, said the new move would help bring in more vibrant people, who were hitherto sidelined by some of these presidents, into the various federations.
“This is a major breakthrough for sports. We’ve had situations where people held on to presidential positions for too long and had not made any reasonable impact.
“There are federations who haven’t had one programme in four years, and then two months to elections, they try to do one competition for about 10 people to gain cheap publicity. Such people sideline those with brilliant ideas from contributing to sports, development,” Kienka said.
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