Bako Calls for Sack of Gusau-Led NFF Board to Avert Further Damage to Nigeria Football – THISDAYLIVE

Duro Ikhazuagbe

Former Sokoto State FA Chairman, Dr Danladi Bako, has described the continued stay in office of the Ibrahim Musa Gusau-led board of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) as an aberration.

Dr Bako who as the Producer of the popular but now rested leading sports programme “MasterSports” on the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), galvanised the fight and advocacy for FIFA to increase Africa’s World Cup slots from two to five in 1992, insisted yesterday that “In years gone by, the Nigerian Football Federation board led by Ibrahim Gusau would have been sacked by now. Their continued stay in office after a woeful first tenure makes past military regimes look messianic because during General Ibrahim Babangida or General Sani Abacha’s regimes, the monumental failures of the current board would not have lasted this long before they get fired.”

The former DG of the Nigeria Broadcasting Commission (NBC) stressed that it was self-serving, immoral and insensitive to throw the emotions of over 200 million football loving Nigerian fans into a ping-pong, ding-dong and topsy-turvy clanger.

 “I imagine the pain of the country and a football loving President Bola Tinubu that the Super Eagles have not qualified for the FIFA World Cup since 2018, losing out in 2022 and 2026 even when Cape Verde, a country of less than a million people qualified, even when a small Caribbean country like Curacao qualified, even when FIFA increased the (CAF) African slots to 10.

“I was the producer of NTA “Mastersports” in 1992 and galvanised the fight and advocacy for FIFA to increase Africa’s slots from 2 to 5. We qualified for the first time in 1994.  32 years later, we can’t qualify for 2022 and 2026 World Cups. Even at the last stages of the last AFCON in Cote d’Ivoire, the President…