http://soccertalknigeria.com/?p=95Conversation With Oyuiki Obaseki BY THE TIME you read this, the 2009 Nigeria Premier League Congress will be about rounding off in Makurdi, Benue State.
Somehow, the July 21-23, 2009 schedule escaped my attention until it was right upon me, otherwise I would have tried to bring this article forward. Perhaps I would even have found time to attend the congress as an observer, but all that is too late now.
However, I was lucky to have a “private telephone congress” with NPL chairman Chief Oyuiki Obaseki Tuesday this week just as he prepared to leave his Abuja office for Makurdi for the “real congress.” Last week in this column, I had raised the matter of the NFL’s alleged serial indebtedness which culminated in the locking up of its offices by the Environmental Protection Agency of the Federal Capital Territory, and I promised find out from Obaseki exactly why the NPL could not pay its bills, despite its huge in-flow of sponsorship funds.
My admiration for Obaseki’s crusading efforts on the Globacom Premier League is well documented in this column, but I am also the first to blow the whistle whenever I felt he was stepping out of line. I ‘stood’ in front of the “Moving Train” for 43 minutes and here is what transpired…
MUMINI ALAO: Good morning, Chief Obaseki. OYUIKI OBASEKI: Good morning, my son, Mumini. How is your family?
We are fine. To start with, I will like to know whether you are back in your office in Abuja or you are operating from under a tree.
Your office was locked up last week because you couldn’t pay your bills.I am back in my office. It is true that our office was sealed last week. But we have resolved the issue and we are back in business. It was a minor issue.
How come you couldn’t pay your bills in the first place? With the millions of Naira you are receiving from Globacom annually, you shouldn’t be getting locked up over a N200,000 levy.I agree, but there was actually a communication gap between us and the agency. The total bill was N300,000 and I actually wanted to pay it in full last year. But I was told we could pay instalmentally so that we could direct our funds to more pressing needs. We paid N100,000 but instead of the agency giving us a notice to pay the balance, they came to seal our office. We were in Lagos for the Federation Cup final when this happened and, immediately on arrival back in Abuja, my secretary Alhassan Yakmut went straight to the agency to complain and they came to open the office. We have also paid the balance N200,000, so everything is okay.
Unfortunately for you, that episode has reinforced suspicions in football circles that the NPL is broke because you have mismanaged your sponsorship funds. How many months salary do you owe your staff?Don’t listen to some of your colleagues, Mumini. Some of them are mischievous. God is my witness that we are we not owing any staff salaries as I speak to you. Today is July 21, and we have paid salary for June. Yes, it is possible that salary may be delayed occasionally for logistic reasons, but we still pay within reasonable time. In fact, the salary is paid directly into the bank accounts of staff, from the accountant down to the cleaners and security men. You may go ahead and conduct your own investigation.
For now, I will take your word, but what we hear is that you can’t pay salary because you claim you are doing capital projects. My question would be don’t you make different provisions for capital and recurrent expenditure?Thank you. If after all my years in business and at my age, I don’t know the difference between capital and recurrent, then something is wrong with me. I told you already that we do not owe. However, what I can also add is that we are doing a staff audit and those we consider ineffective will be swept out. Maybe some of them are giving out false information to cause a distraction and scuttle the audit process, but they will not succeed.
How rich is the NPL? Apart from the title sponsorship money from GLOBACOM, your other sources of income appear to be shrouded in secrecy. For instance, how much is your television contract worth? Nobody seems to knowThank you for asking me this question. I have been hearing all sorts of rumour on this television contract thing and now is the time for me to speak out. When I first got here in 2005, I spent my money to run this secretariat. I have never received One Kobo subvention from any government and I’m waiting for anyone to challenge me on that. Alhaji Sani Lulu (current NFF chairman), Amanze Uchegbulam (vice chairman), Ade Ojeikere and Aisha Falode were all members of my Interim Management Committee and they are alive to prove me right or wrong. We didn’t have enough money and we thought we could make some by selling the TV rights for the league.
NTA and AIT bidded for it and we demanded for N230 million. AIT brought N90m as first instalment but I rejected it because NTA promised to bring N130m. We also wanted more Nigerians to see the league and NTA had a larger network. But eventually, NTA kept postponing its payment until it finally reneged. I regretted rejecting the AIT cheque and I have apologized for not believing them because they didn’t have much equipment at the time. But see where they are today.
Anyway, it was after we lost AIT and NTA that our present consultants for the TV rights, Total Promotions, came in. They brought in DSTV to partner with them and that is the arrangement we still have on ground.
How much is the contract worth?They paid N114 million for the first year in 2006. The contract is for four years with an annual increase of ten percent.
How much do you get from DSTV?We don’t have a contract with DSTV. It was Total Promotions that brought in DSTV so they have their own arrangement between them. Total Promotions also brought in NTA at a time and they were paying the cost of NTA’s coverage so that more Nigerians could watch the league. So, instead of NTA paying rights fees to us, they were actually being paid to cover the matches.
So, you don’t get any money from NTA either.Walahi, nothing. Olorun ngbo! (God can testify!)
How much of the money from Total Promotions do you give to the clubsides?They don’t get any share.
Why not? It is the clubs that play the football, so why are they not getting any share of the TV money?The truth is that the money is not big enough to share and we have an agreement with the clubs who are also members of the NPL board on this. The money is small and it is exhausted on organizing the league. But, beginning from the next (2009/2010) season, part of the proposals we have prepared for congress is to approve the payment of 40 per cent share of the TV money for distribution to the club sides. We can afford to do that now because things are becoming more comfortable for us as a whole.
So, what have you been doing for the clubs before from all your sponsorship money apart from paying your referees and match commissioners? The clubs don’t appear to be getting much from you.They are receiving much and you can ask them. We give them N10 million each at the start of every season from the GLOBACOM fee and that is N200million for 20 clubs. We now pay the indemnities for match officials and that is a big load lifted off the necks of the clubs. We also assist them in many other ways. For example, when Jose Mourinho came to Nigeria recently, it was the NPL that paid the participation fee for all the 20 Premier League coaches that attended. We paid N150,000 per participant.
How much do you receive from GLOBACOM every year?About N800,000 million. For next season, we are actually expecting around N900,000 million according to the yearly graduation in the contract.
That is a huge sum of money. Are you saying you spend all that on match indemnities and training?Of course not. Even you mentioned early on that recurrent and capital expenditure are different. We have also spent a lot of money on capital projects. We now have our own secretariat building from where I am talking to you and we have acquired another piece of land which we are going to develop for commercial purposes. For instance, this secretariat cost us about N200.000million to buy and we have paid for it in full. When the FCDA (Federal Capital Development Authority) came to write a valuation report on it recently, they valued it at N430 million. That is the kind of legacy that I want to leave for the Premier League.
I am a business man and I know the value of investing. We can’t spend all our sponsorship money by sharing to clubs and paying indemnities. The additional piece of land we want to buy will cost us N19 million by the time all the processes and documentations are complete. But I am already getting offers from people who are ready to pay as much as N300,000 million because there’s rock on the land which they can blast and make money. But we are not planning to sell.
Do the club sides share in your vision? Are they satisfied with what you are giving out to them? Are they not grumbling for a bigger share of the sponsorship money?Nobody has complained to me and I am sure many of them will read this interview. Just recently, on the morning of the Federation Cup final in Lagos, I met with all the 20 Premier League clubs with the NFF chairman, Alhaji Sani Lulu. I challenged anybody who had any grievance against me to speak up. Except for some people who felt that we didn’t give them three points and three goals in some protest cases, nobody accused me of any financial mismanagement. Some of the club owners call me a crazy man because I don’t take any rubbish, but none of them has ever called me a thief.
They call you a crazy man, but we (journalists) call you a “Moving Train.”(Laughter).Thank you.
I will suggest that you repeat that open challenge to the clubs at the Congress in Makurdi when you will have a full house so that other football stakeholders and journalists can serve as witnesses. If you come out clean in everybody’s presence, there will less speculation in the press about your secretariat and management of funds. I will do exactly as you have suggested. Trust me; I will do that unless I forget. You know, I am getting old.
Who are the other official sponsors of the League and what is the worth of their sponsosrship?We have Carrier Insurance who are insuring all players in the league and they pay an annual fee of N20 million. Then we have an trial MoU with Lucozade Sport to supply 9,000 cartons of the drink for sharing to all the clubs every week. It is a sponsorship in kind, not in cash. But we will soon be meeting with them to see whether the MoU can become a permanent contract. If you come to our office now, the only drink we will serve you is Lucozade Sport.
Why were you reluctant to investigate the 9-0 match-fixing controversy of the final day of last season? Is it because the two clubs involved, Zamfara United and Kaduna United have their top officials as members of your board?I will not lie to you, Mumini. But I was very embarrassed to learn that the clubs involved in this allegation have top officials in my board. And they, too, are very embarrassed. But it is not because of them that I was reluctant. It’s because the last time we conducted a similar investigation, I spent N6 million to fund the committee and nothing came out due to lack of evidence. I don’t want to pre-empt the findings of the present committee. We will receive their report before the congress begins in Makurdi so that we can present it before the whole house. But, ahead of next season, we have already proposed some amendments to the league rules that will make it unattractive for teams to manipulate results especially towards the end of the season. I don’t want to reveal those proposals now until they have been adopted by the congress. But I can assure you that the penalties for match-fixing are going to be very hefty indeed. Presently, there are no penalties at all in the rules, and even if a team is found guilty of match-fixing, no punishment is specified.
That is a serious oversight on the part of your League board or whoever wrote the rules.I accept, my brother, I accept. But now, we are going to correct that.
I have a suggestion on how you can prove match-fixing without wasting money on any investigative committees and searching for evidence that cannot be found.Please tell me about it.
Get your lawyers to draft rules on match resultPlease tell me about it.
Get your lawyers to draft rules on match results and/or situations that will be classified as “totally unacceptable” or “seriously suspicious” especially in the last four weeks of the season. Suspicious results or circumstances will include outcomes that are glaringly inconsistent with a team’s overall performance during the rest of the season. And if such results and/or circumstances have any impact on who wins the title or goes on relegation, that will be enough “proof” of misdemeanor which is automatically punishable under the rules of the league without any recourse to any special investigation. Lawyers have a way of drafting such rules without leaving any loop-hole for fraudulent clubs to exploit. Maybe you want to brief your lawyers accordingly.Thank you for that brilliant suggestion, Mumini. I will share it with my members and we will see what our lawyers can do about it. We will do everything to put a stop to these last day match-fixing scandals.
You said early on that you had to spend your personal fund to sustain the NPL at some point. I hope you have been fully refunded of all your money.Yes, yes, I have got my money back. Except for just a few hundred thousand Naira, I can say that the NPL is not owing me any money again.
Thank you for your time, and I wish you a very successful Congress in Makurdi.Thank you very much, my brother.
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http://www.completesportsnigeria.com/details.php?category=news&id=9136Obaseki Survives Ouster!As Premier League Clubs Demand For N300m Sponsorship Pay RiseThe congress of the Nigeria Premier League board ended in Makurdi Benue State with club’s demanding for an enhanced share of the title sponsorship fee. The refusal by the NPL board nearly cost Chief Obaseki his position as the congress contemplated his removal.
Hitherto, each of the 20 Premier League clubs receive N10m from the Globacom Telecommunication title sponsorship money.
But the clubs insisted that in the realistic view of the global economic meltdown, there is salient need for the league board to raise the ceiling on their shares.
This demand caused a serious commotion following the hard stance of the NPL and the club owners not to shift ground.
But the situation was brought under control when the house adopted a motion by Davidson Owumi for a review panel to be set up to harmonise the two parties positions.
Complete Sports understands that, this led to the appointment of Mallam David Suleman, chairman of Niger Tornadoes and his Gateway of Aboekuta counterpart to work in tandem with the NPL secretariat to iron out the issue.
NPL had tabled a budget of over N1.1billion to the congress with Globacom’s graduated sponsorship fee of N900m top on the list of the income budget for the league body.
In a communique at the end of the Congress read by the chairman of the Media Committee, Honourable Joe Amene, the Congress approved the final league table for the 2008/2009 season and endorsed the winners and those relegated –– Nasarawa United, FC Abuja, Akwa United and JUTH.
Similarly, the Congress adopted September 19, 2009 as kick off date for the 2009/2010 season but subject to the ratification of the NFF AGM billed for Lokoja, Kogi State.
The NPL congress also endorsed the use of TV friendly stadia for the 2009/2010 season and commended Engineer Sani Ndanusa, Minister of Sports for accepting to release the Nigeria 2009 FIFA U-17 World Cup facilities to the NPL for clubs use.
Finally, the Congress adopted the introduction of regular meetings between the NPL and the clubs, thus, approving three emergency meetings during each season, just as it expressed gratitude to the Benue State government for accepting the responsibility to host the congress.
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