The Challenge of Equality and Freedom of Contracting Parties in the NPL (2): WHY FOOTBALLERS SUFFER News

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The Challenge of Equality and Freedom of Contracting Parties in the NPL (2): WHY FOOTBALLERS SUFFER

By Daily Sports on December 26, 2015

One is forced to ask: Do club managements and football players have equal rights on the letters and substance of contracts between them? Are the parties free in all respect or in any respect at all?

It is our humble view that the harsh economic and social reality facing an average Nigerian professional footballer has placed him on the back heel when contracting with the club management. The player wants to play. He wants to earn. He wants to make a living no matter what is placed on the table. Yes, the player if placed on a comfortable and level platform may choose a club other than the one he had chosen. Most players, if not all, in the Nigerian Professional Football League (NPFL) have one bizarre tale to tell or the other when issues pertaining to the contracts they entered into over the years are concerned. As far as this clime is concerned, the equality and freedom of the club managements and football players is a mirage. It is a fictitious, hollow and horrible concept in the Nigerian Professional League.

The average Nigerian Professional League (NPL) football player is in chains when it comes to entering into contracts between club managements because of the social and economic realities he is bedeviled with. Indeed, the freedom is not there and cannot be said to be there unless and until things and regulations are visibly made and tangibly executed and enforced to guarantee such freedom.

The Players’ Status and Arbitration Committee of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has a litany of cases ranging from inequality between contracting parties to fraud, misrepresentation and the lack of freedom whilst contracting[1].

We advocate that to bridge the unequal bargaining strength between the club and footballer in the NPFL, the NFF and the Virile League Management Company[2] should mandate that the Player’s Union be massively informed and involved in all the stages of perfection of a player’s contract in the NPL. We look at the apex League in Nigeria because of the great symbolism but wish to quickly state that the golden beam be extended to the Nigeria National League, the Nigeria Nationwide League and indeed all league structures authorised by the NFF and the necessary authorities.

Resent the situation as it might, the Football League in Nigeria now truthfully is improving as against when it was seen as the villain and simply walking away as was the case in the past is now out of the question.

Surely, when there is inequality and lack of freedom between contracting parties, disputes are bound to arise and when football disputes arise and are left unresolved or allowed to escalate to the Arbitral Panel or Courts, the result includes inter alia frustration, acrimony, underdevelopment and stagnation which we do not wish to experience now that the League is on a positive speed lane for in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s the social contract ,“the words ‘slavery’ and ‘right’ are contradictory, they cancel each other out.” Whether as between one man and another, or between one man and a whole people, it would always be absurd to say: “I hereby make a covenant with you which is wholly at your expense and wholly to my advantage; I will respect it so long as I please and you shall respect it as long as I wish.”

Indeed, situations like this should be vehemently kicked against by all stakeholders in the Football arena in Nigeria and we urge them to so hold.

•Amobi Ezeaku, Esq. is Legal Adviser, Nigeria Players’ Union. Your comments and reactions are welcome. Please send to 08038338272, 08158461730 or by e-mail to amobi.ezeaku@yahoo.com

[1] Some of the awards given by this Committee are yet to be enforced. One would be right to say that at the moment the Committee could be likened to a toothless bulldog.

[2] Currently, the League Management Company (LMC) is headed by Chief Shehu Dikko, an astute administrator who knows his onion.

Source Daily Sports

Posted December 26, 2015