Nigerian Sports Minister Silent on Parallel NBBF Boards

The Nigerian minister of sports, Solomon Dalung, was silent on the existent of two boards governing basket ball in the country when he spoke on a live television programme on Tuesday.

Sports Village Square recalls that on the eve of the general election into the 31 boards of sports federations, there was an election into the Nigeria Basketball Federation in Kano.

Another election held the following day along with those of 30 others. Both boards of the NBBF lay claim to legitimacy.

But following widespread dissatisfaction by many of the contestants into the various sports federations on Nigeria, the minister of sports, Solomon Dalung has urged the aggrieved candidates to table their complaints before the appeal committee.

He was speaking on a live television programme, TVC news on Tuesday and remarked that it was not unusual to have complaints and grievances coming in the aftermath of every conduct of an electoral process.

He therefore urged such people to use the provisions made available for protests and complaints emanating from the electoral process.

“The beauty of it all is that every credible electoral process has room for ventilation of grievances and in anticipating that we were not going to have a perfect situation, adjudicating bodies were also created to listen to complaints arising from these elections.

“We should allow the process to terminate and if people don’t get justice they can now say that they were short-changed or that the process was not transparent and credible, but to point accusing fingers at the Ministry and create imaginary enemies through distasteful statement is unfair.

Dalung also assured that those who were unlawfully disqualified will be given a fair hearing and justice.

“I have assured Nigerians of credible elections and all those aggrieved should present their grievances to the Appeals Committee. The Committee is made up of people with experience who will look at these complaints on merit and come up with conclusions.

“The only thing I’ll add here is that anyone caught up in the guidelines can never expect anything to be created to accommodate him or her because the guidelines are the ground rules, therefore it is what is going to be used to measure whether somebody was unlawfully disqualified or not even qualified to contest in the first place. All these things will be looked into using the guidelines.

The minister also appealed to public not to condemn the process without exhausting all the channels of expression of dissatisfaction

“Those who have moved to the court of public opinion, raising a barrage of allegations and trying not only to discredit the process but smear the integrity of people, I appeal to them that the Appeals Panel is still there. They should take their grievances there and they will get justice,”Dalung said.