Gombe State Football Association chairman Yakubu Sarma has insisted that State FA chairmen are not opposed to reforms in Nigerian football, revealing that their major disagreement with the National Sports Commission is over who should control the transition process at the Nigeria Football Federation.
Sarma, who led the State FA delegation during the recent consultations with FIFA and CAF officials in Abuja, maintained that the existing NFF Congress should be allowed to resolve the leadership vacuum internally rather than having an external structure imposed on the federation.
“Nobody is against reform,” Sarma said while explaining the position presented to FIFA and CAF.
According to him, the State FA chairmen believe the NFF, CAF and FIFA statutes provide mechanisms through which the current situation can be addressed without abandoning the federation’s established structures.
“We don’t need to go outside the established framework to start bringing about a solution,” he said.
The FA chairmen’s position differs from that presented by several other stakeholder groups during the consultations.
Players’ representatives, coaches and referees were among those reported to have backed a normalisation process, while the State FA bloc argued that the NFF Congress has the authority to establish an interim structure capable of overseeing reforms.
Sarma identified the central disagreement clearly.
“For now, the point of disagreement is whether there should be a normalisation committee or an interim committee,” he said.
The FIFA/CAF assessment followed the resignation of former NFF president Ibrahim Gusau, General Secretary Mohammed Sanusi and other Executive Committee members, which created a leadership vacuum and led to the suspension of the federation’s electoral process.
With FIFA now considering the different positions presented during the consultations, Sarma’s message is that reform itself is not the argument — the battle is over the structure and people who should drive it.
