26th January, 2015
Ahead of the 10 February, 2015 election into the board of Lagos State Football Association, LSFA, the Association of Professional Footballers of Nigeria, APFON, is raising eyebrows over the list of delegates that will vote during the election.
The players’ union, one of the major stakeholders in football all over the world, are contesting the fact that while the statutes of Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, Article 28 Section 1 (d) specifies that the players’ association which is subordinate to the NFF shall present three delegates for the Elective Congress, the 2010 Statutes of LSFA, which will be applied for the 10 February election in its Article 26 on Delegates and Votes, there is no provision for the players’ association as it is seen on the NFF’s statutes.
“When we saw this anomaly, we immediately wrote to Barrister Seyi Akinwunmi, who is the Vice President of the NFF, and the chairman of Lagos FA who said that he was not aware of this and promised that he would look into it,” said Austin Popo, Executive Secretary of APFON.
“I mandated our Lagos chapter to make a written complaint to the Electoral Committee of the LSFA, which informed that they had replied, though I’ve not seen the reply. I want to make it clear that while other states are giving the players’ union right to present delegates for their FA elections, I don’t see any reason why Lagos’s own will be different.
“APFON is also a custodian of the rules as an affiliate and member of the congress and this is supposed to reflect in the statute of the Lagos FA. We should not be the only body that would be exempted by Lagos. We’ll ensure that the right thing is done especially when the chairman is the vice president of the NFF and a legal practitioner,” he said.
In his reaction, Mr. Wale Joseph, a member of the Lagos FA told P.M.NEWS that the APFON, Lagos chapter is economical with the truth as they have since been given one slot in the delegates’ list for the election.
He added that their demand to be given a slot in the Divisional Football Association (DFA) level would be hard to achieve as they are not affiliated to any of the DFAs.
“What they are demanding as far as I know is at the DFA levels. They have a vote during the election. I think they have not read the statute very well. If there is any problem, they should write to us so that we can amicably sort things out,” said Joseph.