The Sports Writers Association of Nigeria (SWAN), Lagos Chapter, has called on club owners and managers in the Nigeria Premier Football League (NPFL) to exercise caution on the issue of the tenure and mandate of the League Management Company (LMC), advising that any attempt to frustrate or abort the on-going reforms would throw the league and Nigerian domestic football back into the dark recesses from which it has just been salvaged.
The Lagos SWAN statement jointly signed by its chairman, Fred Edoreh, and secretary, Emma Njoku, is in reaction to the communiqué issued at a meeting of some club owners and managers in Abuja, Wednesday, purportedly dismissing the LMC.
The statement read: "We are a bit disturbed with the call, so early in the day, for the dissolution of the League Management Company when it is working so hard to re-invent the Nigerian premier league system and is steadily achieving laudable results and inspiring the confidence of both the public and existing potential investors.
"While we respect the place of the club owners and managers as critical stakeholders and their right to have a say in the running of the league, we must also respect the authority of the Nigeria Football Federation as the ultimate governor of football in Nigeria by which it licenced the LMC to manage the league following the endless confusion and non-performance that trailed it while in the hands of defunct league boards.
"We have seen the remarkable results posted by the LMC in its efforts to unleash the potentials and achieve greater value for the league and we believe that any attempt to bring back the old politics which hitherto constrained the system would be regressive."