Ikpeme Makes False Start as NFF Acting General Secretary

Dr Emmanuel Ikpeme appears to have made a false start as Acting General Secretary of the Nigeria Football Federation. A man who has served as Deputy General Secretary of the NFF for what seems like ages should know better than to issue a directive that appears to go beyond the powers vested in the Secretariat by the NFF Statutes.

The controversy over his letter disbanding the NFF Electoral Committee is therefore not merely about the letter itself. It raises a fundamental question about whether the Acting General Secretary understands the limits of his authority under the statutes he is supposed to administer.

The NFF Statutes remain the governing document of the federation until they are properly amended. And that is where the present crisis becomes interesting.

The current Statutes were amended by the NFF Congress at an Extraordinary General Assembly in Yenagoa on March 23, 2026. Congress also approved amendments to the NFF Electoral Code and Standing Orders at that meeting.

But nowhere does the fact that the Statutes were amended in March mean that they cannot be amended again in September or at any other time, provided the procedure prescribed by the Statutes is followed.

That is the point the Federal Government must understand.

If President Bola Tinubu and the Nigerian government genuinely want to reform Nigerian football, there is nothing stopping them from proposing further amendments to the NFF Statutes. The question is not how recently the Statutes were amended. The question is whether the prescribed process for amending them is followed.

And who is responsible for making such fundamental changes? The NFF Congress.

This is precisely why the attempt to deal with the present crisis outside the Congress raises questions. The Statutes already contemplate the possibility of vacancies occurring within the NFF Executive Committee as a result of resignations. The appropriate statutory response is not for the Secretariat to simply declare the Executive Committee dissolved or assume powers that belong to Congress.

Where the prescribed threshold of vacancies is reached, the Statutes provide for an Extraordinary Congress to be convened. That is the constitutional mechanism through which the federation is expected to address such a situation.

So why embark on a merry-go-round to FIFA when the NFF’s own Statutes provide a pathway? Why not simply invoke the relevant provision and convene an Extraordinary General Assembly?

That Congress could determine what should happen to the vacant positions. It could decide whether vacancies should be filled under the existing Statutes. It could also consider proposals for further amendments if the government believes the existing framework is inadequate.

Indeed, the March 2026 precedent demonstrates that Congress can amend the Statutes. It did so only months ago. Therefore, if the government wants deeper reforms, it should prepare its reform proposals and take them to Congress. Government does not need to pretend that Congress does not exist in order to reform the NFF. It needs to understand how to use Congress.

That is particularly important because the NFF Electoral Committee itself was constituted through the federation’s statutory structures. The question that should therefore be answered is straightforward: under what provision of the NFF Statutes does the Acting General Secretary have the authority to unilaterally disband an Electoral Committee constituted through the appropriate NFF process?

If there is such a provision, let it be cited. If there is none, then the letter was a serious misstep.

The Acting General Secretary should, in fact, have been the first person to advise the National Sports Commission that a presidential directive cannot automatically override the NFF Statutes.

That would not have amounted to defying the President. It would have been professional advice.

The President can direct the government machinery. The NSC can formulate and implement government sports policy. But the internal constitutional affairs of an association operating under its own statutes must still be handled through the mechanisms established by those statutes.

And this is where the reform argument becomes even more compelling. Those who want to reform Nigerian football should not confuse government’s power to demand reform with government’s power to rewrite the NFF’s constitution by administrative fiat. They are two different things.

President Tinubu can demand change. The Federal Government can insist that Nigerian football must be better governed. The NSC can develop a reform agenda. But if those reforms require amendments to the NFF Statutes, the process should go through Congress. Fortunately, the Congress presently constituted provides that route.

Yes, many members of the NFF Congress are people who benefited immensely from the Gusau-led Executive Committee. That cannot be ignored. But that is precisely why government must know how to engage with them.

Government should use the existing Congress to achieve the reforms it wants rather than attempting to eliminate the body whose constitutional responsibility includes approving amendments to the Statutes. If Congress supports the reforms, they can be properly adopted. If Congress rejects them, then government knows exactly where the resistance lies.

But bypassing Congress creates a different problem: it risks turning a legitimate reform agenda into a constitutional and governance dispute. The present crisis could therefore have been handled much more simply.

The Acting General Secretary should have gone back to the Statutes, identified the provisions dealing with the resignations from the Executive Committee and invoked them. If the circumstances required an Extraordinary Congress, he should have convened one. Congress could then have considered the vacancies and the future of the electoral process.

If the Federal Government wanted structural changes, its proposals could have been placed before Congress for consideration and, where necessary, amendment of the Statutes.

That is a far cleaner route than issuing a letter purporting to disband an electoral body and then looking to FIFA to resolve a problem that the NFF’s own constitutional framework already provides mechanisms to address. The Federal Government must be careful here.

Reform is necessary. Nigerian football needs reform. But how reform is achieved is just as important as the reform itself. A reform that ignores the governing statutes could eventually become another problem requiring reform.

And for Ikpeme, this should be a lesson at the beginning of his tenure as Acting General Secretary: the Secretariat is not Congress. He is the custodian and administrator of the NFF’s affairs, not the owner of its constitution. The NFF Statutes must remain the starting point. If they are inadequate, amend them.

If the Executive Committee has become incapable of functioning because of resignations, invoke the provisions dealing with vacancies. If fundamental changes are required, convene Congress.
But do not create powers that the Statutes do not give you.

That is why the letter attributed to Ikpeme represents, at the very least, a troubling false start. And if the Federal Government truly wants to leave a lasting legacy of reform in Nigerian football, it should not seek to govern around the NFF Congress. IT SHOULD LEARN HOW TO USE IT!