By BRIGHT UCHE
After over 10 years, the hearing of the appeal in the legal battle over the lingering Broadcast Rights Title of the Nigeria Premier League commenced recently at the Appeal Court, Lagos. The appeal which was instituted by the League Management Company also included other parties: Total Promotions Nigeria Limited and Nigeria Football League Limited.
Total Promotions Nigeria Limited had in 2013 bidded and won the Broadcast Rights title of the Premier League in a keenly contested and fairly executed open bidding. But crisis started when football administrators unilaterally set up the Interim Management Committee, IMC, (later, League Management Company Ltd) to run the affairs of the Nigeria Premier League with Hon Nduka Irabor as chairman.
One of LMC’s first assignments was to ensure the unilateral cancellation of Total Promotions’ Broadcast Rights which was still running and contracted the same to Super Sports. LMC claimed to have derived that power on the grounds that Nigeria Football League Ltd had been declared legally dead – a decision Nigeria’s apex court, the Supreme Court dismissed as wrong. The Supreme Court also declared the LMC FRAUDULENT as it had no powers to so usurp the Broadcast Rights and any other marketing properties of NFLL.
Prior to the Supreme Court judgement, Total Promotions had approached a High Court in Lagos where the company eventually got injunction orders restraining the LMC, Super Sports, its new broadcast partners, from interfering with the Broadcast Right, officially and legally residing in Total Promotions until the court’s final judgement. It was against this ruling that the LMC in 2014 (10 years ago) filed its appeal at Lagos Appeal Court but abandoned it. The Court of Appeal graciously opened its books and relisted the appeal case for hearing only this month.
The new Premier League sheriffs , named Nigeria Premier Football League Ltd., newly created by NFF to manage Nigerian Football League wasted no time to cajole Nigerians to believe that Total Promotions Ltd is the appellant.
But in his reaction to the apparently deliberate and alleged fraudulent misinformation by the new League managers led by Mr. Gbenga Elegbeleye, the Managing Director of Total Promotions, Mr Niyi Alonge, only advised Mr Elegbeleye to acquaint himself with elementary legal facts of the body he’s heading and stop displaying zero knowledge of the body he’s illegally running.
Alonge said: “Given Supreme Court judgement, it ought to be elementary knowledge to Elegbeleye that Total Promotions could not have done anything about the appeal case when it was not the Appellant. Total Promotions is a defendant. It was Elegbeleye‘s fraudulent predecessor, the LMC (whom the Supreme Court so pronounced Fraudulent) that should have pursued the appeal or Elegbeleye should have activated the appeal as successor because same Supreme Court affirmed the league Elegbeleye is superintending over is same as the league LMC had managed given only promotion or demotion of four clubs up or down. Given the capacity of Elegbeleye as Chairman, it’s not worth wondering why he’s at sea regarding the legal status of the league he is inheriting.”
Mr Alonge revealed that Total Promotions has always alerted the LMC/NPFL and its would be partners of running foul of the court orders. “Total Promotions once warned LMC, Next TV, Redstrike, GTI, Star Times and others through writing over the NPFL Broadcast Rights infringement in official letters often released to the press saying: “If you (LMC/NPFL and the new partners) persist in ignoring a judgement of the court, which ordered perpetual injunction against interfering in execution of TPNL broadcast rights, which the LMC refused to comply with and instead filed an appeal on or about 2014 and proudly abandoned it till date, then hold yourselves for the breach of court injunction.
“Unfortunately, the tide has changed now, even with Davidson Owumi calling the shots at the NPFL where partners (not sponsors) are allegedly brought and foisted on the public with total disregard for corporate decency and procurement procedures that demand a prior public open tender and bidding.”
Total Promotions Ltd also warned the LMC and other entities of the dire consequences of not obeying the Nigerian laws urging them to avoid being contemptuous of the valid court order.
He said: “For public knowledge, let it be known that a number of landmark judgments have, however, been pronounced by Nigerian courts on the running of football before and since the LMC abandoned the Broadcast Rights case in the Appeal Court. Justice Donatus Okorowo’s judgment is prominent here. Justice Okorowo in his unappealed judgement, had, on Page 48, laid the presumptuous legality of NFF to rest when he declared: “Nigeria Football Association (NFA) was established under Section 1 of the Nigeria Football Association Act as a body corporate with perpetual succession and common seal with power to sue and be sued.
“The Law did not make reference to it as the Nigeria Football Federation. The name under which it is charged to manage football under the law is Nigeria Football Association. It has no power to address itself as the Nigeria Football Federation. And the document titled Nigeria Football Federation Statute which purports to confer the name Nigeria Football Federation to the Nigeria Football Association is not a codified law under the Laws of Federation of Nigeria.
“It is therefore illegal for the Nigeria Football Association to answer another name than the name by which it is created as a legal entity.”
Still on the same judgment in Suit No; FHC/ABJ/CS/179/2010 brought by Dr Sam Sam Jaja against the NFLL, NFA/NFF and others, Okorowo granted the plaintiff an order of “perpetual injunction restraining the NFF and others either by themselves, their agents, servants, privies, agencies or otherwise, from taking any steps or doing anything either in the name of Nigeria Premier League or Nigeria Football Federation in relation to League Football or any aspect of football administration and management.”
“This judgment which perpetually restrained NFF that inaugurated Elegbeleye’s board was never appealed which at the very least meant the Aminu Maigari-led board or Pinnick Amaju and Ibrahim Gusau boards all act in futility. In fact, the Supreme Court affirmed this particular judgement was never appealed,” Total Promotions MD added.
“Just recently, the NFF in an official press release warned the public not to toy with the National football teams’ titles which had for no less than 20 years been the preserved of Pamodzi marketing company. The NFF press release made specific references to Bet9ja, Aiteo etc urging them to desist from any right to use the name of national teams to market their product or services.
Ironically, it’s the same illegal NFF that gave still birth to run the league to Elegbeleye’s NPFL that is directing that some titles owned by NFLL and still under Total Promotions be abrogated, in spite of the injunctions of the court restraining any such act and even perpetually banning NFF from having anything to do with administration of football in Nigeria.
“The less said for now the better.”
