The Sports Minister, Tammy Danagogo has faulted the action of the Aminu Maigari led faction that stayed away from participating in the August 26th Congress that later turned to election that ushered in Christopher Giwa led new Nigeria Football Federation (NFF).
He argued that the feuding faction could have used their numerical strength to sway decision in their favour instead of choosing to stay away from the Congress in the first place.
“Our greatest challenge in this whole brouhaha is that most people involved are not sincere, they are not gentlemanly enough, and they are not honourable enough. Most people are just looking at winning at all cost and that has been my greatest challenge as regards this issue.
“We had agreed that five persons are going to contest the (NFF Presidential) election. So let the five persons contest and whoever wins, win. Agreements were reached but before the election, in fact, most of you who are journalists even know all these things before me.
“But by the eve of the election resolutions were being passed with money and (some people) have also signed extension of tenure. That was a very, very provocative and wrong step that was being taken. That has metamorphosed into what we are seeing now. So we had to step in to stop that cause of trying to impose somebody or extending tenures. Then after stopping it people now reacted in different ways.
“During my address I had to recap what we agreed before we came to the Congress. The unfortunate mistake is that this other group that went to meet somewhere should have been at that place (Chida Hotel Congress venue). If you notice when I was coming to the Congress place I was talking on phone, I was talking to the other group then and I was telling them that the only way for evil not to prevail is for good men to stand up to do something.
“You will not just walk out (of the Congress) you don’t need to go and stay on the road protesting but come into the hall and address the issue the way it happened and so that all you will be able to say let us follow what we agreed on. We were expecting them to come but they didn’t come (to the venue of the Congress) until I left there. I also heard that they didn’t come until Mike (Umeh) declared the event open and I heard that they now moved a motion that the agenda was to go back to the original plan of holding election
“Then they held the election and Umeh lost and so on and so forth. I want to imagine that after my address if the other 30 people that I heard met somewhere (in Abuja) had joined the other delegates present at the Congress venue maybe the plan to conduct the election could have failed. The way to correct a system is not to quarrel; it is not to go out and castigate, but to sit down and discuss to resolve the issue,” the Minister stated.