FG withdraws recognition from League Management Company

Current NPFL champions, Rivers United

Another round of crisis has hit Nigerian football. The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), which is due to elect a new leadership 30 September after witnessing delay, has smashed the hammer on the League Management Company, incorporated by the NFF in 2012 in place of the Nigeria Football League.

A statement on Friday by the Permanent Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports Development, Alhaji Ismaila Abubakar declared that the Federal Government would no longer recognise the LMC as “operator of the Nigerian Professional Football League”.

The Ministry advised the NFF “to immediately withdraw the Licence given to the LMC and, in the meantime, set up an Interim Management Committee (IMC), to include the current Chief Executive Officer and Chief Operating Officer of the LMC to oversee the affairs of the League until a proper Professional League Board is constituted in accordance with the Statutes of the NFF”.

This, the Ministry stated, is “to avert further chaos in our domestic football”.

Organised by the LMC, the NPFL is the highest level of the Nigerian football league system. It produces teams that represent the country in inter-club competitions like the CAF Champions League and CAF Confederation Cup. LMC has been in charge of the NPFL in the last 10 years.

The Ministry claimed that the action against LMC was informed by the need to “rescue our domestic football from total collapse”.

Abubakar’s statement attributed the Federal Government’s decision to “several unpleasant incidents regarding the management of the Football League, specifically, the declaration of the National Football League (NFL) as an illegal body by the Court; the status of the League Management Company (LMC), the NFL’s successor-in-title being outside the purview of the Statutes of the NFF”.

The statement further reads:  “This decision has become necessary because of the obvious aberration (which is at variance with our football statutes or the laws of the land) whereby a private company is GIFTED the mandate to manage or run the league indefinitely, without the full involvement of and leadership by the clubs, and devoid of any process to monitor the progress and development of the game.”

NFF is the owner of the NPFL having issued it licence to organise and regulate the top tier league to the LMC.

In November 2012, NFF, with the agreement and support of the National Sports Commission, constituted an IMC for the league as part of measures to avert a total collapse of the top tier professional league. The IMC supervised the formation and incorporation of the LMC to run a transparent and commercially viable professional league.

The LMC is owned by the NFF and the participating clubs. In implementing the FIFA prescribed Club Licensing Regulation, only clubs which meet the requirements and remain in the NPFL at the start of the season are entitled to retain shares in the LMC.

At incorporation, promoters of the LMC were allotted 25 percent shares in compliance with the provision of the Nigeria Companies and Allied Matters Act, 1990.