Governing Bodies
NIGERIA FOOTBALL FEDERATION RELOCATES TO NEW HEADQUARTERS
BY KUNLE SOLAJA.
After 23 years and two months, the offices of the Nigeria Football Federation are moving to a new headquarters.
In a series of tweets from the NFF official handle, photographs emerged of the chieftains in the new offices.
Also are photographs of the national team across the ages. The football governing body moved to the previous twin glass building it shares with the Federal Road Safety Commission on January 2, 1997 after relocating from a twin-duplex at the Ogunlana Drive in Surulere, Lagos.
Originally, the NFF was to have moved in March 2018 to a new facility that was commissioned seven years ago. The new office is a 27-room facility with a penthouse. The Rotimi Amaechi-led Presidential Task Force executed it from the fund raised towards Nigeria’s participation in the 2010 World Cup.
But the
original structure, painted in yellow has been given a facelift. The façade is
now adorned in green and white colours, the national colours and the corporate
colours of Nigerian football.
Located inside the Package B of the MKO Abiola National Stadium, Abuja the new headquarters is named Sunday Dankaro House.
Dankaro was a
former chairman of the then Nigeria Football Association (NFA) and a
younger brother to John Dankaro, a pioneer member of Nigeria national team in
1949.
The new NFF
building is located just beside the FIFA Technical Centre and football turf. It
was hurriedly commissioned on July 18, 2013, even though the previous
administration of Aminu Maigari and the current one lay claim to some defects
in the building that needed rectification apart from the need to get befitting
furniture.
When the
movement of the NFF secretariat is fully effected, Sports Village Square can
authoritatively declare that the Dankaro House will be the fourth secretariat
the football governing body would occupy since Nigeria’s independence in 1960
In the 1960s, the football governing body operated from the then Lagos City Stadium that changed name to Onikan Stadium but was late last year renamed as Mobolaji Johnson Arena.
By the 1970s,
the secretariat moved to a prefabricated wooden complex under the eastern
pavilion of the Lagos National Stadium terraces.
From there, the secretariat moved in 1991 to the twin duplex at Ogunlana Drive in Surulere Lagos which the then NFA had acquired as national team hostel in the 1963. It was commissioned on April 5, 1963.
The twin duplex now serves as the organization’s Lagos liaison office. On Thursday January 2, 1997, the body moved to Abuja.
The issue of an enduring secretariat for the NFF had been on long before the current administration.
The late Commodore Edwin Kentebe, as the chairman of the then NFA in 1973 claimed that his administration had plans to rebuild the two-storey block at Ogunlana Drive. The proposal remained on the drawing board till he left office that year.
Over a decade later, the then Group Captain Ikazoboh set a fund-raising committee in 1986 for a football house.
The project, a five-storey building, largely of concrete, was to be within the National Stadium complex in Lagos.
Chief Nathaniel Idowu headed the committee. But before it could begin work, the committee was sacked along with the Ikazoboh’s board that established it.
In 1989, when Ikazoboh was reappointed as NFA chairman, another committee was set up and headed by Alhaji Mohammed Grema. It suffered the same fate as its predecessor.
By the turn of the century, the idea of a football house seemed to have been abandoned. It never featured in the handover of succeeding administrators.
The regime of Alhaji Ibrahim Galadima on October 15, 2003 got the approval of The Goal Bureau of FIFA to build a technical centre in Abuja. The then NFA came up with an architectural design of a building tagged “The Eagle House”.
It was to incorporate a training camp. The project did not see the light of the day before the board was ousted.
In 2012, a third architectural design of a proposed headquarters for the football governing body was unveiled. Like the technical centre, which is part of the Abuja National Stadium complex, it is also part of the FIFA Goal Project in Nigeria as the approval for the construction of the federation headquarters was approved by FIFA on December 1, 2009.
According to FIFA, the project is estimated at $650,000 out of which the Goal Bureau of FIFA will pay $400,000 leaving the remaining $250,000 for the NFF to bear. But the NFF later sought for amendment to the original project and proposed a national technical centre in Bauchi.
So, in February 2012 when the foundation for the new secretariat was being laid, the credit was given to the National Sports Commission and the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on Nigeria’s participation at the World Cup 2010 as the financiers.
The project estimated at N350 million is named Sunday Dankaro House, after the man with the longest tenure as the head of the Nigerian football governing body. It was under him that the country first won the Africa Cup of Nations in 1980.
The edifice is built on a gross floor area of 2,000 square metres and boasts of a helipad, a courtyard, a penthouse and a manicured park
Kirsty Coventry became the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the most powerful person in sport, on Monday in a handover ceremony with her predecessor Thomas Bach.
The Zimbabwean is the first woman and African to head the body, and at 41, the youngest since Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who is credited with founding the modern-day Olympics.
Coventry accepted the Olympic key from Bach, who, like her, is an Olympic champion — he won a team fencing gold in 1976 and she earned two swimming golds in 2004 and 2008.
Stepping down after a turbulent 12-year tenure, Bach expressed his confidence that the Olympic movement was “in the best of hands” and Coventry would bring “conviction, integrity and a dynamic perspective” to the role.
Coventry, who swept to a crushing first-round victory in the election in Greece in March, leans heavily on her family.
Aside from her parents, who were present at the ceremony in Lausanne, there is her husband Tyrone Seward, who was effectively her campaign manager, and two daughters, six-year-old Ella, who Bach addresses as “princess”, and Lily, just seven months old.
“Ella saw this spider web in the garden and I pointed out how it is made, and how strong and resilient it is to bad weather and little critters,” said Coventry, who takes over officially at midnight Swiss time Monday (2200 GMT).
“But if one little bit breaks it becomes weaker. That spider web is our movement, it is complex, beautiful and strong but it only works if we remain together and united.”
‘Pure passion’
Coventry said she could not believe how her life had evolved since she first dreamt of Olympic glory in 1992.
“How lucky are we creating a platform for generations to come to reach their dreams,” she said to a packed audience in a marquee in the Olympic House garden, which comprised IOC members, including those she defeated, and dignitaries.
“It is amazing and incredible, indeed I cannot believe that from my dream in 1992 of going to an Olympic Games and winning a medal I would be standing here with you to make dreams for more young children round the world.”
Coventry, who served in the Zimbabwean government as sports and arts Minister from 2019 to this year, said the Olympic movement was much more than a “multi-sport event platform.”
“We (IOC members) are guardians of this movement, which is also about inspiring and changing lives and bringing hope,” she said.
“These things are not to be taken lightly and I will be working with each and every one of you to continue to change lives and be a beacon of hope in a divided world.
“I am really honoured to walk this journey with you.”
Bach, who during his tenure had to grapple with Russian doping and their invasions of the Crimea and Ukraine as well as the Covid pandemic, said he was standing down filled with “gratitude, joy and confidence” in his successor.
“With her election it sends out a powerful message, that the IOC continues to evolve,” said the 71-year-old German, who was named honorary lifetime president in Greece in March.
“It has its first female and African to hold this position, and the youngest president since Pierre de Coubertin. She represents the truly global and youthful spirit of our community.”
Bach, who choked back tears at one point during his valedictory speech, was praised to the rafters by Coventry, who was widely seen as his preferred candidate of the seven vying for his post.
After a warm embrace, she credited him with teaching her to “listen to people and to respect them,” and praised him for leading the movement with “pure passion and purpose.”
“You have kept us united through the most turbulent times.
“You left us with many legacies and hope, thank you from the bottom of my heart for leading us with passion and never wavering from our values.”
-AFP
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Former Zimbabwean swimmer Kirsty Coventry took over the leadership of the International Olympic Committee from Thomas Bach in a ceremony on Monday with the 2028 Los Angeles Games already threatening to fill her in-tray to overflowing.
Coventry, who starts her eight-year spell officially on Tuesday as the most powerful sports administrator in the world, became the first woman and first African to be elected head of the Olympic ruling body in March.
Much of the discussion during campaigning focused on the IOC’s need for change in its marketing strategies with several top Olympic sponsors having left in the past 12 months.
However, with Los Angeles hit by protests against immigration raids, and relations tense between state and city officials, and the U.S. government, the 2028 Games have become the major talking point in the movement that would ordinarily be focusing on next year’s Milano-Cortina Winter Games.
Coventry has long-standing ties with the United States, dating back to her time as a leading swimmer at Auburn University in Alabama. That will prove useful ahead of LA 2028, and she has said she will seek to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump to discuss the Games.
Coventry will also need to find time to help secure the long-term finances of the movement. The IOC, which generates billions of dollars in revenues each year in sponsorship and broadcasting deals for the Olympics, has secured $7.3 billion for 2025-28 and $6.2 billion for 2029-2032. More contracts are expected for both periods.
COMMERCIAL OPPORTUNITIES
Coventry is also expected to continue the IOC’s plans to expand commercial opportunities for sponsors at the Olympics with the organisation’s finances in a robust state and the privately-funded LA Olympics a good place to start.
Coventry needed only one round of voting to clinch the race to succeed Bach, beating six other candidates, making history for the African continent, with the IOC having been ruled for 131 years by European or North American men.
Her background and being the first female president will be assets in a diverse IOC membership and the international makeup of Olympic stakeholders.
On Monday she was handed the golden key to the IOC by Bach, who was the organisation’s president for 12 years.
“I am really honoured I get to walk this journey with you. I cannot wait for anything that lies ahead,” Coventry said in her address to IOC members and other Olympic stakeholders.
“I know I have the best team to support me and our movement over the next eight years.”
Coventry will hold a two-day workshop this week to get feedback from members on key IOC issues.
“Working together and consistently finding ways to strengthen and keep united our movement that will ensure that we wake up daily… to continue to inspire,” she said.
A seven-time Olympic medallist, Coventry won 200m backstroke gold at the 2004 Athens Games and in Beijing four years later.
“With her election, you have also sent a powerful message to the world: the IOC continues to evolve,” Bach said in his speech. “With Kirsty Coventry, the Olympic movement will be in the best of hands.”
-Reuters
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Penalties scored when a player accidentally touches the ball twice must be retaken, world soccer’s lawmaking body IFAB has said after Atletico Madrid’s Julian Alvarez had his spot kick disallowed in a Champions League last-16 match.
During a tense shootout with Real Madrid in March, Argentine forward Alvarez slipped and the VAR spotted that his left foot touched the ball slightly before he kicked it with his right.
Although Alvarez converted the penalty, the goal was chalked off and Atletico went on to lose the shootout and were eliminated from the Champions League.
European soccer’s governing body UEFA said the correct decision was made under the current laws but IFAB (International Football Association Board) has said that in such cases the penalty must be retaken.
Atletico Madrid v Real Valladolid – Metropolitano, Madrid, Spain – April 14, 2025 Atletico Madrid’s Julian Alvarez scores their first goal from the penalty spot REUTERS/Susana Vera/File Photo
“(When) the penalty taker accidentally kicks the ball with both feet simultaneously or the ball touches their non-kicking foot or leg immediately after the kick: if the kick is successful, it is retaken,” IFAB said in a circular.
“If the kick is unsuccessful, an indirect free kick is awarded (unless the referee plays advantage when it clearly benefits the defending team). In the case of penalties (penalty shootout), the kick is recorded as missed.”
The decision to disallow Alvarez’s penalty left Atletico boss Diego Simeone livid and the club’s fans outraged.
IFAB added that if the penalty taker deliberately kicks the ball with both feet or deliberately touches it a second time, an indirect free kick is awarded or, in the case of shootouts, it is recorded as missed.
The new procedures are effective for competitions starting on or after July 1, but IFAB said it may be used in competitions that start this month.
-Reuters
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