Shehu Dikko will go down in the history of Nigeria football as the chairman of the Nigeria Professional Football League who ran the NPFL inconclusively for three football seasons. (2018-2020).
Dikko will also not fondly be remembered as the chairman, who doubled as owner and director of Mediterranean Sports Limited – a proxy agent well positioned to dubiously fleece all sponsorship funds to NPFL and NFF and divert same into private pockets.
Sometime in 2018 Shehu Dikko, the chairman of the League Management Company (LMC) unveiled with so much fanfare and razzmatazz a humongous television broadcast right deal with Next TV.
The financial details of the purported deal ran into many millions of United States of America Dollars.
But after two football seasons, this under-the- table Next TV deal is yet to see the light of day.
What happened to the Next TV deal? Was the Next TV deal just another scam?
Unfortunately, the NPFL has been running without a major sponsor for the past five seasons since SuperSport, the former broadcast right holders pulled out due to lack of transparency and accountability on the part of the organisers of the NPFL, the LMC.
The consequence is that clubs in the NPFL no longer earn their royalties and share of sponsorship monies.
There is also now a backlog of unpaid indemnities to NPFL match officials running into millions, while even staff of the LMC are owed salaries of several months.
Rather most disappointingly the promoters of LMC, who fraudulently obtained the license to run the NPFL from the NFF, have exhibited lack of capacity and gross incompetence since they took over the affairs of the league that they have only succeeded in running it aground.
BY HARRISON JALLA