Since the Nduka Irabor-led League Management Company (LMC) started its task of restructuring the Nigerian Football League, it has met with different forms of resistance, surprisingly,  by those 'who stand to benefit' from the changes planned by the body.

Fielding questions on the crisis in the league recently in Ilorin, Sports Minister, Bolaji Abdullahi, who is one of the champions of reform in the system, says the club managers, who are opposed to some of the new ideas by the LMC, would applaud the league company if they understood the benefits.

He also spoke on other issues on Nigerian sports development. Excerpts:

RECENTLY, the club managers said they have sacked the League Management Company. Among their grievances is that the LMC is going beyond its mandate. They also accuse the LMC of not carrying them along. What do you make of the impasse?

I won't call what is happening now an impasse. It is just another form of resistance to positive change, which should be expected.

For various reasons people resist change. But I still want to think that the resistance we are facing is also likely to be a lack of appreciation of the overall benefit of the change to the clubs themselves.

The managers of the clubs , while they recognize their strengths,  should also acknowledge their limitations. I don't think they have the power to arrogate to themselves the kind of role they have assumed in the last couple of days. They say they can manage the league themselves. But you cannot be playing in the league and also want to regulate the same league. You cannot be the actor and still be the regulator.

Now, the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) that has the primary responsibility and authority to manage football in Nigeria has delegated the power to so do in the league to the League Management Company (LMC) and has not withdrawn that authority .

Until the NFF reverses itself and withdraws that authority, the LMC remains the bona fide authority on the management of the league in Nigeria. So I will deem anybody else seeking to arrogate to himself that authority to be overreaching himself.

I want to think that they are concerned, but this concern should be channelled to the relevant authority. I have not heard that any of the club managers has made any petition, whether singly or collectively to the NFF about the way the LMC has carried out its duties.

None of them has come to me to complain that he is not happy with the way things are going. Not to follow this channel and just go ahead to make unilateral pronouncements is uncalled for and for me it must be condemned. People cannot behave that way because we are not in a jungle. This is a country that must be guided by rules and regulations.

One of the issues they have been harping on is the LMC holding the leagues' shares in trust for them. Do you see that as a sort of misinformation or misinterpretation of the roles of the LMC?

When people don't know, those who know have the responsibility to educate them. Personally, I have had the opportunity to discuss with the chairman of the LMC and I told him that he probably needs to do more of communication with the club owners. And I think since then he has made efforts to bring everybody on board. I know that the LMC has made some advertorials where it detailed how things are now being structured. I am also aware that he has met some of the club managers to tell them how things are now being done.

Fundamentally, two representatives of the clubs are members of the LMC and they are supposed to communicate the grievances, the doubts and questions arising from the clubs to the LMC. They are members of the LMC and no decision would be taken without their knowledge. But be that as it may, we also have to look at this talk of interest.

What does the interest mean? Is it the interest of the clubs? Does the interest of the clubs necessarily mean the interest of the club managers? Does the interest of the clubs or the club managers necessarily represent the interest of the club owners? Does it represent the interest of other parties that have personal benefits from the way things are arranged?

I still want to believe that probably more work has to be done by the LMC to bring everybody on board at this stage. But what I completely disagree with is to try to upturn the entire system because some people have grievances. If you have grievances the right thing to do is to bring such grievances to the table and seek redress. And there are appropriate channels to seek redress.

The NFF is the overall governing body of football in Nigeria, so if club managers severally or collectively have any misgivings about the things that have been done, it is incumbent on them to approach the NFF to ventilate or to seek rearrangement. They have not done that. They have access to come to me as the minister to table their grievances, but not one of them has come to me to do that.

So, to say that the LMC has incorporated a company and holds the shares in trust for them without consulting them will be less than the truth. I say this because their representatives in the LMC are part and parcel of the decision to incorporate the company. They know about it, it is incumbent on them to inform their members.

I asked one of them, Sabo Babayaro:  “When you people have a meeting, do you go back to tell your colleagues, because you are representing them here?” and he said,  “Yes.”

He said he did not know why they were behaving like this.

So, I am surprised that the same Babayaro woke up one morning to say that the LMC deserved to be sacked. So what has changed?

These are the same people that said they are now happy with the way the league is being run... that they are happy with the results. That away teams are now winning matches... that everything is now transparent. So, what has suddenly changed?

When we were talking about reviewing the title right we didn't have much problem. Everybody wanted us to attack Glo, everybody wanted to see us tackle Glo. We tackled Glo and they came round to do things the way we wanted in the interest of the clubs.

They have issued a check of N550 million, but we have not finished negotiating with them. Don't forget that where we are coming from is that Total Promotions is the title right owner of the league. But when we encountered this logjam, we asked Total Promotions to please cede that right to Glo. They said they are ready to do that because they are not fanatical about it. But they must be compensated.

Glo said alright, we will give you N100 million. Then Glo came with the long list of conditions, and I got angry and threw it back at them.

I told them that we don't have to play football if that is what we will go through. That was because they brought all sorts of funny things. But things were sorted out. We met everybody halfway and Glo's representatives met LMC representatives and they agreed on the contract. We are in the final stage of signing the contract so that the money will be released.

Now, all the problems started when we came to the issue of broadcast rights.

What is the LMC saying? The LMC is saying there is no way in the world where the broadcast right is wholly devolved in one company. It is either you want the terrestrial broadcast right or you want the satellite broadcast right. And there is also the right for the online media. You have to choose the one you want.

In strictly legalistic terms, there is no such they called NPL anywhere. So if anybody took the NPL to court he would be wasting his time. Even Glo, which took NPL to court, withdrew the case because the NPL is dead.

Then we told Total Promotions this right you had was with the NPL, but because you helped the league in the past, let us renegotiate and that is where the trouble started.

People started going backwards and forward. We met with Supersports officials during the AFCON in South Africa and they gave us details of the contract they have with Total Promotions. Even the Supersports officials said they were not happy because they were not seeing the money in the league and they cannot get out of the contract.

I understand that they are having different discussions on how to disengage from the third party and negotiate directly with the league. Supersports said they originally wanted to deal with the league directly, but some people told them they must deal with the middleman. Why would anybody tell the buyer to deal with a middleman?

So, we said alright, middleman no problem, but we have to renegotiate the terms of the contract so that clubs will benefit from the broadcast right of the league. Let any club manager tell us how his club has benefited from the proceeds of the broadcast right that has existed over the years.

Unfortunately, the broadcast rights still subsist till 2015 with a clause that gives Total Promotions the first right of refusal up till 2020.

That is the kind of contract people have signed in this country and we said we must get out of it and this is where the trouble started.

And so when people tell us about interest, they should tell us what interest they are fighting for. Definitely, not the interest of the clubs.

Which state governor is not complaining that the clubs are drainpipes on his resources and we are saying we cannot continue that way. We must incorporate the clubs into proper limited liability companies where the state government will own shares and shares would be sold to private individuals.

Take Kwara United, for example... when it has matches in Ilorin, you cannot get any taxi from 4.00pm because all the taxi drivers will park their vehicles and head to the stadium to watch Kwara United. These are potential shareholders. When you incorporate a club as a company, it means the club will have a chief executive officer, who will run it as a business venture.

You can no longer go to the government to collect money weekly to prosecute matches. So, if these are some of the changes people are resisting, we cannot support them to do that. If there are specific grievances against the LMC we will address these grievances. But if it is the interest that wants us to scatter everything and go back to the ignoble past, we will not do that.

Some of the club owners complain that the LMC has started doing away with NPL property and staff even when the NPL has not been properly wound up.

Winding up the NPL is a minor legal issue that is being taken care of. When the judge declared NPL illegal, did he say anybody should do business with it? We have instructed our lawyer to advise the CAC to wind up the NPL properly. But as I said, that is simply administrative. What I want to hear is that a court has upturned that judgment or that a court has issued a stay of execution on that ruling in Nigeria. There is nothing like that.

That the CAC has not carried out the winding up of the NPL does not affect the judgment. If there was a counter application that says there is a stay of execution on the case, then we will look at it.

The LMC is a new company that has been incorporated under the authority of the NFF to run the league in Nigeria. It is only 25 per cent of the new company's shares that is now being held. Twenty per cent held by Nduka Irabor on behalf of the clubs, while Aminu Maigari has five per cent on behalf of the NFF. At the point of it being incorporated, an affidavit was sworn by Irabor and deposited at the CAC that he would relinquish the shares as soon as the clubs are incorporated into companies. That is the arrangement. People were coming to me to say that Nduka Irabor has registered a company in his name.

Some of the club owners are not aware of this, while some are saying that he cannot hold their shares for them because they are not kids.

It was published and it was circulated in the newspapers. Some of them signed and collected the literature.

Once these clubs are incorporated the shares will return to them. It is a process but we like to look for conspiracies. If we are looking for opportunity to scatter things we bring up conspiracies. Are we dumb? How can we sit down and one person will go and register a company in his name?

And let me tell you, apart from signing that indemnity that he is ready to relinquish the shares as soon as the clubs are incorporated, he also signed another one that he is ready to relinquish the chairmanship of the LMC any time the NFF asks him to do so.

When I saw that I was shocked. I asked him: 'So if some people manage to get the NFF to ask you to leave and they get rid of you and get somebody to rubbish all we have done, what then happens to this change that we are trying to bring about?' He said: 'This is Nigeria, I don't want anybody to think that I am deriving any personal benefit from running the league.' That is what he has done. I saw it and they know it. If they don't know, I am telling them now. If they want evidence, I will show it to them.

There is a group called the NFA, which says the LMC is illegal because it was not incorporated through it. They claim to be the right football governing body because the law, according to them, does not recognize the NFF. What is your take on that?

Look, I think this is being spread to the ridiculous level. I am the Minister of Sports supervising the NFF and I don't know this group. I give money to the NFF and I don't know the other group.

Were they in South Africa for the Nations Cup? This is absurd, to say the least. I know what they are talking about. This is serious business and people should not trivialise it.

People always come up to say that this is illegal, that is illegal and it is this question of things being illegal that has held Nigerian football down over the years. Now, we are getting somewhere and people are saying we must remain where we were. It will not happen.

There appears to be some political undertones and I wonder if you are trying to bring in some of the sports commissioners to make them understand what the LMC is all about?

Yes, we will bring the commissioners on board. That is part of the things I have advised the LMC to do. And as the Minister of Sports, I will also try to get across to the commissioners.

I will meet with the commission when they arrive for the council meeting tomorrow (Thursday last week) to keep them abreast of events.

But many of them are aware already. That is why Delta has suspended the chairman of Warri Wolves for acting contrary to Delta's support of the LMC and the change it is bringing about.

For those of them that don't understand,  we will make information available to them so that they understand. But they cannot ask us to stop breathing until they understand.

The NFF has invited the club managers to a meeting on Tuesday... will you be there to straighten things out?

I don't have to be there because the NFF has the responsibility of running football in the country and it is quite capable of doing that. The NFF initiated this process, the NFF constituted the LMC. It spearheaded the transformation of the League Management Committee to League Management Company. So the NFF understands what it has to do.

But for me at the political level, I will engage the commissioners and also make presentations at the National Economic Council, where the governors will be able to know that what we are talking about is good for Nigeria.

I will still appeal to the club managers to understand what we are trying to do. They are stakeholders and we want to carry them along. And we don't want any acrimony in doing so.

If there is anybody that still does not understand what is going on, he should go to the LMC for clarification. If the LMC does not satisfy him, he should go the NFF and where he is not still satisfied, he should come to me.

If they want change in terms of process or procedure, we will look at the possibility of that change. But if what they want is for us to revert to the status quo, it will not happen.

Let's move away from the LMC and football. After the last National Sports festival, you said the festival would henceforth be thrown open to all comers so long as they are Nigerians. Are you planning to include the intermediate and junior categories to discover young athletes, who may not get the chance to compete in the festival because of the presence of the elite athletes?

We have to look at the principle behind the National Sports Festival. You see, when we suffered the shame of London 2012 Olympics, one the things we said was that we will search for new talents at the 2012 National Sports festival in Lagos.

Take table tennis as an example.. we lost out of the event in the first round because we used the same players that have been representing us over the years. Segun Toriola, Funke Oshonaike, among others, are people who had done very well in the past, but they were no longer up to the demands of the game.

So, when we came back, I constituted a committee to go round the various games at the Lagos Sports festival to pencil down new athletes that would constitute the new team.

Bruce Ijirigho, who is in charge of the Cross River grassroots programme, was in charge of the committee. When the report was presented to me, it contained a list of 84 new athletes in various fields. It also indicated the age of each of these athletes and when I looked at the average age it came to about 24.

So, when you are just discovering a 24-year-old athlete, when will you develop such an athlete? The next Olympics is a few years away, which means they will be 27, 28 when the next Olympics comes around. This is an age when most athletes are talking about retirement. At 24, Usain Bolt has done two Olympics.

So in that situation, I told my colleagues at the NSC that we definitely must look for another means of getting young talented athletes for the country because the National Sports Festival is no longer capable of doing that for us.

In fairness to Lagos, they organized an efficient event. Everything ran smoothly, but the media aspect of it was a challenge. That is Nigeria's Olympics and it should be a glamorous event that will attract fans to the stadium.

Definitely, the National Sports Festival did not leave up to its billings. So, we started asking questions and we thought maybe we should open the festival because the rules of the existing festival say you have to be resident in Nigeria to compete and if you have competed internationally more than twice you cannot be part of the festival .

The people who made the festival rules then, were focused on discovering fresh talents and also not to give undue advantage to states who have the wherewithal to bring athletes from abroad over those who rely on home grown athletes. These are very germane concerns.

But I was in London and I saw that in some events about seven Nigerians represented other countries to the extent that you began to think whether our salvation is not in the Diaspora.

As we are today, we don't have even one high performance centre and we have the athletes abroad who have the benefits of these world-class facilities in training and we said they can't come and compete. That is one side.

Another side is that when you say that an athlete that has represented Nigeria twice cannot compete at the National Sports Festival, then what happens to them? The Abugunlokos and others are not based abroad but here in Nigeria, what happens to them?

The states' sports councils employ some of them and we are saying they cannot compete for these states. So what we did is to reconcile the aspiration of those who made the festival rules with the imperatives of this challenges we face and that is why we decided to open the festival to allow Nigerians anywhere in the world to come and compete. It will also give states the encouragement to send athletes abroad for training.

There is no reason any other state should beat Nasarawa, Plateau and Taraba states in long distance races. They may give up when it comes to boxing, weightlifting or wrestling, but they should be able to confidently tell their governors that you will win the medals in long distance races.

Let states invest in sports they have comparative advantage so that when all these are packed together, we will have a national pool of athletes in various sports. That way, you would have equalized the individual states' disadvantages in different sports.

But sports have become big business, and you have to invest in it to compete effectively. A state that has refused to invest in sports cannot hope to compete effectively against a Delta State that has spent so much on its athletes or against a Lagos State that is building mini-stadia across the state.