Posted by By Tunde Sulaiman on
He may have been more than 3, 000 kilometres away from the ‘inquest' but the Alhaji Ibrahim Galadima scored a major moral victory in his battle with the Ministry over control of Nigerian football, when the delegation sent by the ministry to justify its stance failed to convince officials of the world soccer governing body FIFA that they were right to adopt such a stance.
He may have been more than 3, 000 kilometres away from the ‘inquest' but the Alhaji Ibrahim Galadima scored a major moral victory in his battle with the Ministry over control of Nigerian football, when the delegation sent by the ministry to justify its stance failed to convince officials of the world soccer governing body FIFA that they were right to adopt such a stance.
In fact the meeting, which held at the five-star Marriott Hotel, Cairo yesterday, saw the FIFA party lead by its Secretary General Urs Linsi telling the Nigerian delegation point blank that they could not go ahead with the planned fresh elections scheduled for February 17.
The Ministry's team lead by the leader of the ‘Stakeholders Forum' Chief Amanze Uchegbulam, was unable to sustain its arguments against the alleged breaches of the statutes by Galadima which led to them ‘annulling' the Kano elections and re-scheduling their own for next month.
THISDAYSports reliably learnt that of all arguments put forward by delegation to justify their actions, the only one that got the attention of the FIFA team was that about 20 of the delegates that were in Kano were ‘impostors'.
Responding to this FIFA gave them seven days to prove their claim beyond reasonable doubt.
However, they will face a tough up hill task to prove their case because apart from having the signatures of all the 68 delegates that took part in the Kano polls, they were also made to thumb print their papers in a move to thwart any of them from denying that thy showed up in the ancient city for the elections.
THISDAYSports also has it on very good authority that they also signed for their transport claims on arrival at the venue.
The there is also video coverage of the proceedings that can be used as further evidence of those present at the Kano event.
A delighted Galadima said FIFA's action had vindicated him.
'I'm very happy with the information reaching me from Cairo. I always believed that FIFA would be fair in reaching their judgement and what they did today was fair."
He said he was not fighting any minister or government but was only fighting to preserve the independence of Nigerian football.
'I'm not fighting anybody in government or the government itself what I'm fighting is to ensure that football is independent from government control.
'I know that if they invest money they will want to know how it's being spent. There are proper ways that checks and balances can be introduced to ensure this happens. But they should not keep football at the mercy of government bureaucrats."
He also expressed his shock at the claims made by the Ministry's delegation in Cairo that 20 of those that took part in the Kano elections were impostors.
'They never said this when they were here so how comes they suddenly know that there were impostors at the election in front of FIFA officials in Cairo? Its very sad that they would say such things just to discredit the election."