A slap on the wrist for Gombe United

Gombe United are in the news again. This time, it is for another wrong reason. After playing a 1-1 draw with Plateau United in last Wednesday’s rescheduled 2022 Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) week 14 match at the Pantami stadium Gombe, their fans unleashed mayhem on the visiting team. It is said trouble actually started even before the final whistle as some irate fans of Gombe United pelted the match referees with harmful objects. According to reports, the situation eventually went out of hand at the end of the match when the fans went bananas and broke one of the windscreens of Plateau United’s bus, injuring an official of the club in the process.

When the video that captured the act went viral, the Media Officer of Gombe United, Halilu Teli, issued a statement brazenly accussing Plateau United of concocting lies to tarnish the reputation of his club. He claimed in the statement that after the match, Plateau United had an accident at a filling station located a few meters away from the Pantami stadium.

According to him, it was in the process of trying to navigate their way through a traffic gridlock that the driver of the bus collided with a commercial motorcycle rider (okada rider) which left the bus with a shattered windscreen.

I may be accused of crying more than the bereaved but in local parlance, it is said ‘photo no de lie’ (A picture does not lie). Going by the video in circulation and the height of the bus, only a pathological liar or a mischief maker will believe the Media Officer’s ‘tale by the moonlight’.

Well, after dilly-dalling for days, the League Management Company (LMC) on Friday examined the report submitted to it by the Match Commissioner and have sanctioned Gombe United for breaching the Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) Rules and Framework.

For failing to provide adequate security cover for the visiting team at the end of the match to ensure they departed the city of Gombe without obstruction, Gombe United have been fined N3m and would play their next home match behind closed doors.

In addition, an official of the club, Mr. Bulus Plando has been banned from NPFL MatchDay activities for eight matches. The club has 48 hours to submit to these sanctions or go on appeal.

Gombe United are not first-time offenders. It will be recalled that at the 2021 Nigeria National League (NNL) Super 8 in Enugu, supporters of Gombe United attacked the referees who officiated their match with El-Kanemi Warriors.

The NNL announced some punitive measures against Gombe United which included a fine of N.5m but that was all. Nobody can say for sure if the fine was paid. Gombe United stayed in the playoff and picked a ticket to return to the Nigerian topflight.

It is rather sad to note that supporters of Gombe United have refused to turn a new leaf. Once again, they have fallen prey to the monster called hooliganism to the dismay of genuine football fans.

Although acts of hooliganism in the NPFL are mostly associated with northern clubs, the north drips with an undiluted passion for football. An average northerner is crazy about the sport. He is passionate and hates to lose. There is no region in Nigeria, where football enjoys followership like the north.

Whenever Kano Pillars are playing at the Sani Abacha stadium, the arena is usually filled to its capacity. The same goes for Wikki Tourists at the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa Stadium in Bauchi and Gombe United at the Pantami Stadium in Gombe. Plateau United also enjoys a huge following in Jos. Even in Borno State, the epicentre of insurgency in Nigeria, football matches still attract mammoth crowds.

Unfortunately, most northern clubs are susceptible to incessant acts of hooliganism because their supporters are averse to defeat. All they want is victory. As a matter of fact, it is only in the north that fans can force organisers of a football match to change a referee, if they feel he is ‘wanting’ in discharging his duties. The vociferous fans can be heard shouting ‘ka chanji referee, ka chanji referee’, meaning change the referee!, change the referee!! Although this can’t be found anywhere in the law books, for peace to reign, sometimes, they have their way.

Sadly, the problem of hooliganism will not leave anytime soon because to a large extent, it is being handled with kid gloves. There are laws which are designed to tame the monster but those charged with the responsibility of enforcing them are behaving like toothless bulldogs. They bark loudly but can never bite errant clubs hard enough.

At every offence, clubs are oftentimes given slaps on the wrist and allowed to go back to their old ways. Points are hardly deducted from offenders. All the LMC does is to impose what Nigerians would call ‘audio fines’ and then banish erring clubs to other venues where they play a few matches and return home to continue from where they were stopped. In the current season, after attacking Remo Stars, Dakkada were banished to Benin City but they are already back in Uyo where it will be business as usual.

In the case of Gombe United, there is even nothing like banishment. They are to pay a small fine and play a match behind closed doors. Isn’t this a slap on the wrist?

As long as serious punitive measures can’t be taken against offending clubs, their fans will continue to perpetuate this crime. However, those clubs that have continued to benefit from this unsporting behaviour too should know that they can never eat their cake and have it.

For instance, if Gombe United were banished from their fortress, the Pantami Stadium, it would have surely affected their present momentum. Infact, NPFL clubs hate to play home away from home because they are denied what is called ‘home advantage’. ‘No man’s land’, as they call it, had sent clubs on relegation. This is what Gombe United must avoid.