Gara Faults Minister’s Meeting With NFF Presidential Candidates

Special Adviser to Gombe State governor on strategy and information management, Ahmed Shuaibu Gara Gombe, has faulted the move by the minister of youth and sports development, Mr Sunday Dare, to meet with all presidential candidates of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF).

With the elective congress of the NFF slated for Friday in Benin City threatened by court’s order order restraining the body from holding the elections, Sports Minister Dare has called for a meeting of all the 11 presidential candidates in his office at the MKO Abiola Stadium in Abuja today.

According to Gara Gombe, the meeting is unnecessary, saying the presidential candidates of NFF have no connection with the Sports Minister because he is not the electoral umpire.

“Why are they meeting the minister of sports and for what? Did he buy their forms and what connection do they have with him? Is he the one conducting the elections?” Gara asked rhetorically.

“The minister deceived us with a masterplan, promised implementation of it before elections, he promised LMC will be dissolved, nothing happens. The same way the minister bungled the basketball ban with all the collateral damages he will do the same with football. I used to have pity for him before but not anymore.”

The former chairman Gombe State Football Association (GSFA) also accused the candidates of NFF elections of desperation. “These same aspirants who want to rule our football went and signed one of the most senseless undertakings in the history of elections in the world. One of the criteria to contest is an undertaking in the form of an affidavit that they ‘waived irrevocably’ their rights and privilege to contest the outcome of the elections in a regular court of law. The same right guaranteed them by the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. They now abandoned it and transferred it to an ad hoc committee.

“There is a court order against the elections, yet they keep campaigning, preparing as if there is no law in this country. The same situation that we found ourselves in making them want to contest the election. No difference between all of them and Amaju, sadly some of them are lawyers. Now if any of them wins he will run to FIFA for protection,” Gara stated.