Community Sports and Educational Development (CSED) has bemoaned the present parlous and inactive state of the game of netball in Nigeria.
According to a petition signed by the founder of the foremost NGO, Mr. Cornelius Ehimiaghe, and forwarded to relevant sports authorities in Nigeria, it lamented that the game has continued to suffer for inactivity due to what it described as the dictatorial tendencies and high-handedness of the long serving secretary-general of the Nigeria Netball Federation, Mrs. Hellen Manufor.
The NNF, supposedly led by its President Nze Ozichukwu Fidelis Chukwu, have left the game literally comatose in the country in the last 7 years. The petition revealed that valiants efforts to breathe life into the game in view of the potentials of Nigerians to excel in the sport have equally been stonewalled as Manufor, a former commonwealth gold medallist in the sport, have been operating from the United Kingdom and with no structures in place for the game to thrive in Nigeria.
” She has literally captured the game and holding it in a vice-like grip. The game of netball is suffering in the country. We(CSED) want the development of netball game in Nigeria.
” This is a sport that Nigerian youths can dominate. Yet, it has remained in a state of comatose because of the illegality and inactivity of Manufor and her illegal board of NNF,” Ehimiaghe lamented.
CSED went further to state that it would not relent its efforts to reclaim the sport for the benefits of Nigerian youths, genuinely concerned stakeholders and lovers of the game. Adding that its lawyers are working on its plans to take the illegal leadership of NNF to the courts in order to save the game.
