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| SEGUN ODEGBAMI |
Nigeria’s one time national team
player and renown sports personality, Segun Odegbami, otherwise known as “Mathematical
Odegbami” who played in the Green Eagles, the country’s senior team in the
years past has come out to state that he had warned the world about ythe
presidency of Sepp Blatter at the world football governing body FIFA as early
as in the beginning of this year.
He
states that in an article he wrote in January 2015, he had raised his
reservation about Sepp Blatter and had asked that everybody rise up and stop
him from being the president of FIFA for the good of football.
He
said he had cause to get back to one of the editors of a publication he sent
his article to but who objected to publish it because he felt the publication
would incur the wrath of Mr. Blatter. Mr. Odegbami says that at the beginning
of the year, no one dared to challenge Blatter and he goes ahead to imagine how
he even had the courage to do just that.
FIFA
in 2015 went through a period of great controversy that nobody would ever have
imagined, Blatter before now was the ultimate authority in world football and
no one dared to question his decisions, the few who did faced dire consequences,
not even countries were spared this experience as they could be banned at his
discretion and in this reign of authoritarian leadership, corruption, impunity,
etc. was encouraged even at national and local levels of football
administration worldwide.
Odegbami
says this was what led to his raising the alert in January 2015 when he and a
few others spoke against the reelection of Blatter as FIFA president and sure
enough today, they stand vindicated by the exposure of one big scandal or
another with more controversies being unearthed every now and then in the world
of international football.
He
says in his article which he titled “Sepp Blatter must be stopped now!” he
spoke of the adverse effect of sit tight leadership as it was precursor to
maladministration with the propensity to turn even good leaders to power drunk
dictators. He recalled the cases of political leaders who remained too long in
power ending up in the abuse of their power and asked that all interested
parties join hands in ensuring that Mr. Blatter did not get reelected. He drew
their attention to the number of scandals threatening the integrity of the
greatest game in the world.
Well,
everyone can now see what Odegbami saw earlier in the year as FIFA through its
Ethics committee tries to clear up the mess which has continued to be spewed
since the can of scandals was opened. We look forward to the end of the phase
of FIFA’s evolution, may it come ouit the better for it. Lessons should not
only be learned but measures must be taken to guard against the re occurrence of
such. It is known that while trust takes quite a while to build up, it is
destroyed in a matter of seconds.
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