Dear President Buhari, Our Sports Minister Okay?
Fred Edoreh
On Monday morning, Nigerians were relieved to see President Muhammadu Buhari intervene on the crisis affecting the smooth running of the Nigeria Football Federation. He ordered the restoration of the Executive Committee led by Amaju Pinnick back to office after the Chris Giwa group took over the secretariat for several weeks following an ex-parte order from the Federal High Court.
The President had, through a memo personally signed by the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), on Friday, July 20, briefed the Minister of Sports, Solomon Dalung, of the government’s wish to run Nigeria football in line with FIFA Statutes and cautioned him against effecting one sided judgment on the dispute as well as making further public comments on the matter until the conclusion of the cases in court.
The memo was copied the Inspector General of Police and the Director General of the State Security Service for action.
In the evening of same Monday, Dalung released a ministerial statement rejecting the directives of the President and the action of government in restoring sanity.
“As far as I am concerned,” he said, “nothing has changed. There is no development after the Supreme Court ruling of April 27, 2018, and the Federal High Court Order of 5th June 2018.
The President cannot go against the rule of law. The order issued by the court has not been vacated and the President cannot vacate a court order because there are clear cut processes of doing that.”
He declared the action of government in this regard as “security excesses”, saying he has initiated his own process “to work out a road map out of the quagmire.”
While the dispute in Nigeria football has been embarrassing to Nigerians, as it presents us before the global community as disorderly, what is more disturbing is how Dalung’s counter portrays the government of Nigeria as disorganised and without respectable leadership.
Is Dalung saying that, as a minister, he cannot take directives from the President? Is he suggesting that the Attorney General lied in saying that the directive was from the President? What does he mean by “security excesses”? Does it mean that the Police and State Security Services in Nigeria act without command? Does this whole scenario not portray the government as without unity of purpose, action and a commanding structure?
How can the Minister of Sports suggest that the Minister of Justice is wrong to have interpreted and adviced on a judicial issue? Who between them is more competent and officially recognized to advice on a legal matter which Dalung himself has described as a “quagmire”?
In relation to his grounds of rejecting the President’s directive, fact is there is no judgment or order of the Supreme Court for Giwa to take over the NFF.
What the Supreme Court ruled on, on April 27, was the objection of the NFF on the re-listing of the Giwa suit, and it only directed that the matter re-listed for retrial at the lower court. It therefore is a lie for Dalung to keep saying there is a Supreme Court judgment.
If this was not so, there would have been no further need for the Giwa group to apply for an ex-parte order to temporarily take over the NFF which was granted on June 5 and which Dalung gleefully effected.
Even at that, the said exparte has lapsed and can no longer sustain Giwa in office. By insisting that the ex-parte order has not been vacated and that the President cannot vacate it, it is a wonder that Dalung who flaunts an LLB, LM and LLM in law does not know that by Order 26, Rule 12 of Federal High Court (Civil Procedures) Rules, 2009, “no order made on motion ex-parte shall last for more than fourteen days after the party or person affected by the order has applied for the order to be varied or discharged or last for another fourteen days after the application to vary or discharge it has been argued.”
Edoreh is immediate past chairman of Lagos State Sportswriters Association of Nigeria (SWAN)