Dream Team VI arrive Brazil
The ministry turned down the request, citing unavailability of funds. Since the trip has been paid for anyway, the players and coaches travelled to the USA.
But it is the season of padding, and the football house, the body that controls the nation’s number one passion, supposed that Speaker Yakubu Dogara and his boys should not have the exclusive right to our commonwealth.
They then devise other means. After their training tour, they stayed back in the USA and a few days to the beginning of the football event of the Olympics, they sent an official of the NFF to the Ministry to request for tickets for the team.
At the Ministry, the official was informed that Angie Taylor, head of High Performance Center, had already purchased tickets for the football team and they are expected to return home from their training tour and travel from Nigeria.
But officials of the NFF, backed by a large section of the sporting press, started blackmailing the Ministry that NFF must buy their tickets and make their travel arrangements.
The Ministry officials, who are not deep enough to stand their ground, caved to the media pressure and agreed to give them the money to buy their tickets.
The US dollar equivalent of N80 million was wired to a bank in Seattle. Whereas Abdulmumin Jibrin was the nemesis of Speaker Dogara and his co-paddlers, the nemesis of NFF ticket paddlers was different time zones. Seattle is three hours ahead of Atlanta so the banks had closed for the day therefore, they could not collect the money.
Determined to go ahead with the padding scheme, they insisted they will not leave Atlanta unless government gives them money to purchase tickets. Pleas by Vice President Yemi Oshibajo, Minister of Finance Kemi Adeosun and Minister of Information Lai Mohammed fell on deaf ears; they even rejected the plane Yemi Idowu chartered for them at the cost of $300,000.00, his personal funds.
At this point, the Federal Government called their bluff and told them to forget about going to Rio. Unlike Dogara who has vowed not to resign, the ticket paddlers quickly retrieved their Delta Airline tickets and rerouted it to Brazil.
But the damage had been done. The greed of some NFF officials caused Nigeria to be the object of ridicule in international media.
Players and some officials, who knew nothing about the padding, were made to suffer physical and mental torture for several hours.
No doubt, the officials of the NFF must be sanctioned so as to serve as deterrent to others, but the blame also lies with the Minister of Sports, Solomon Dalung.
Since he assumed office last year, Dalung has done more of talking than acting. His several directives to NFF are either completely ignored or treated with contempt. Even when he warned the NFF against employing a foreign coach, they announced the employment of a French coach who disgraced Nigeria by telling the world that there was no agreement between him and Nigeria.
They are on the verge of unveiling a German despite a ministerial directive to the contrary. Under Dalung, it has been all motion, no movement. If the minister devotes a quarter of the time he spends on social media to his job, our sports will be better.
The sporting press is also blameworthy. Most sports journalists knew the NFF officials were being stingy with the truth but refrained from writing the truth because of pecuniary gains, especially appointment as match commissioners and match assessors.
As for NFF, they are lucky we don’t have Minister like Ibrahim Isah Bio. When Sanni Lulu and other members of his board did the same in the run up to the South Africa 2010 World Cup, they were writing statements from Kuje Prison after the World Cup.
Getting to the root of this ticket padding saga and sanctioning those found culpable is a litmus test for Dalung, one prays he will not fail the test.
Olukayode Thomas is a two-time CNN African Journalist of the Year Award Winner, he writes from Lagos.
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