It is the norm. An incumbent board designs an electoral process to give it the advantage to retain power. Every previous board of every association does that. The Nigeria Professional League, NPL, board of Chief Onyuki Obaseki is no exception. Unfortunately, even the best conceived script sometimes goes awry as has happened with the out-gone board. The NPL sets up an electoral committee. Objections are raised by some powerful members of the Congress and the committee is sacked, a new committee is set up. This is designed to favour the new power block. The committee starts work and discovers that the conflicting power blocks are at each others throat and are working to cancel each other out. In such situation it is the grass under the fighting elephants that suffers. The drama, thereafter, takes on a life of its own. Things do not go again according to the script. More groups and forces emerge from within the congress and matters become more complicated. The victims of this development pile up. No one envisages what is being thrown up. Candidates are disqualified or eliminated on technical grounds. There is now a grave danger that there may be no candidate or a credible one at the end of the exercise. With the image of the league that requires pumping up, it is critical that the new board coming after the one led by the towering figure of Obaseki must clearly be seen to be potentially better than the last one. It must have a leader with pedigree, intellect, experience, and a solid background in football to reassure its members and the private sector of better days when the new board takes over. He must be both influential and sellable to the private sector particularly in the face of the several questions of accountability and waste attached to the out-gone board. In the past few months the league has been running without funds from its major sponsor which is not satisfied with the use to which its funds have been put. The new board chairman must command great respect and be an added asset to the board. Without question, the out-gone board, for good or for bad, left a certain standard in management and administration below which the next board must not descend. The new board must be better in every material particular than the out-gone one. That should be the goal. Unfortunately, with the way things are unfolding in the election drama that may not happen.

The drama goes on. A disgruntled stakeholder, Ray Nnaji, a lawyer and fire-brand administrator known for his rabble-rousing, takes the NPL to court on a 15-count charge including the legality of the existence of the body itself in an effort, I am told, to bring some sanity to the system. The court grants an injunction stopping the electoral process, but not before another major drama has thrown an additional spanner to the works. One of the major contenders from a zone unofficially designed to produce the next chairman, Sam Sam Jaja, a man with good credentials for the position but seen as a usurper by one of the powerful blocks in the league, is shockingly disqualified on some fuzzy technical ground. He is angry and heads for the courts as well. This move uncovers a puppeteer behind the scene. The NFF, not visible in the drama up to this point, working silently and stealthily behind the scene, emerges from the shadows and bares its lethal fangs. It threatens all those that have gone to court with fire and brimstone. No member of the body of football takes its association to court. Of course, that is balderdash, but the threat is issued. No one knows yet how the persons involved will react. It is rumoured that the gentlemen may have been offered Greek gifts, one of which is to be guest of the association at the World Cup should they withdraw their cases from the courts.

Meanwhile, the injunction is having its effect. The tenure of the board expires. Their 4 years tenure ends. They hurriedly organise an emergency congress to determine what to do to avoid a league operating in a vacuum. There are more intrigues and more drama as the scripts goes crazy spiralling out of the control of any one group. The Executive Secretary, a staff of the Sports Ministry, invokes the power of government and the secretariat, and declares the death of the board. The congress refuses to set up an interim board and decides that the secretariat runs the league till the end of the season or the conclusion of the cases in court, depending on which happens first.

Everything grinds to a halt in the electoral process. Government is very influential in football administration in the country, after all but a very few of the clubs are owned by government and all but a very few of the members of the congress and the board are appointees of government. Everyone looks in the direction of the National Sports Commission for direction. The Chairman of the commission has been silent on what government wants. Then it happens! A totally new spin is added to the script. The Minister of Sports and Chairman of the National Sports Commission is relieved of his position! The pendulum of the leadership of the NPL is swinging out of control!

The drama is on recess at the moment as all eyes revert in the direction of the courts. Will Ray Nnaji blink, bite the bait of the NFF, drop his court case and be compensated with a trip to the World Cup as compensation? Or will he pursue the case to its logical conclusion? Will Sam Sam Jaja succumb to the threat of a future ban from all football activities and withdraw his own case? What happens to the electoral committee set up by a board that no longer exists? Will the secretariat restart the entire process all over again under the same electoral committee? Will the executive secretary survive the present purge being an active participant in the last dispensation? Will a new committee be set up by the Sports Commission or the NFF which is still an agency of government? Will the requirements for eligibility be changed to now allow for freer and unencumbered elections without any pre-conceived agenda? Suddenly, the Minister of sports is removed in a new unexpected twist to the drama!