TheCable

The Nigeria Olympic Committee (NOC) on Wednesday said that elections into the various sports federations will hold not later than May.

Tunde Popoola, NOC secretary general, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that the tenure of the incumbent board members will expire between March and April.

“The elections will hold shortly because prolonging it will be doing a lot of injustice to the terms of their offices,” he said.

“Nothing actually is delaying, it’s just the logistics. We are going through a process which is not exactly new but want to use the best practices in conducting it.

“The election will witness a change from the usual norm in the past. We want to ensure that the election is a good one and we are not rushing to get it conducted.

“We are actually not running out of time, so we’re not rushing. Ordinarily, the election should be conducted by April ending.

“The Minister for Youth and Sports and the NOC are trying to see how we can meet with sports federations’ presidents on how best the election can be conducted.

“They are stakeholders and we need to hear them out and have their inputs.

The former hockey player said that there’s really nothing out of the norm that was coming into the elections.

“We want the federations to conduct the elections themselves with the NOC, and National Sports Commission playing just supervisory roles and guiding is necessary.

“The constitutions of each federation would be used in conducting its election.

“Where a federation does not have a constitution or it’s not approved by its international body, then NOC will adopt a middle approach.

“There is general guideline which of course is not against running the affairs of such federations,” he said.

He said that the election would be over a period of two weeks.

“The first week will be for zonal elections and followed by the board elections,’’ said the Secretary-General.

Popoola added that the minister for youth and sports, Solomon Dalung, had promised that there won’t be any government nominee in the forthcoming elections.

“This is a good development because there’s no space for such in a democracy. The election would be done democratically and that’s what the NOC is preaching,’’ he said.

On forms purchase, Popoola said that NOC and federation presidents will meet to devise how best to go about it.

“Federations may come up with their forms but off course the NOC will scrutinise it first because it’s made available to intended aspirants.

“The essence is to ensure that it’s not wired to favour a particular set of people.

“We at NOC are ready to ensure that the elections are free and fair to all,” he concluded.