Confederation of African Football (CAF) Club Licensing Manager, Ahmed Harraz on Wednesday led a delegation of instructors for the CAF/Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) Club Licensing Seminar to a preliminary meeting with the League Management Company (LMC) during which LMC Chairman, Shehu Dikko briefed them on the status of Club Licensing implementation in Nigeria.

Dikko, in welcoming the delegation which included former Ghana international, Anthony Baffoe, General Secretary of Zambia Football Association, George Kasengele and Dominique Niyonzima from Burundi, said Nigeria has been acknowledged by CAF and organizations such as Soccerex as one of the first countries to develop a full fledged Club Licensing Regulation document which has been available to all stakeholders and the general public on the LMC website, www.npfl.ng. The Nigeria Club Licensing Regulation was drafted by the LMC and came into force after it was adopted by the NFF Executive Committee on January 31, 2014.

The LMC boss further informed the CAF delegation that Nigeria have since 2014 set up the two decision making bodies statutorily required for the operation of licensing system, the First Instance Body and the Appeals Body with the NFF delegating the operations of the licensing system to the LMC which constitutes the First Instance Body while the NFF retained and constituted the Appeals Body. The First Instance Body has as Chairman, Dikko with Barrister A. U Mustapha as Chairman of the Appeals Body since they were constituted in January 2014.

The LMC Chairman commended CAF for supporting the seminar and harped on the importance of developing a regulation that will be realistic in implementation, noting that “stringent regulation requirements may make it impossible to play the league .

“Nigeria was one of the first few countries in Africa to develop the Club Licensing document in compliance with the CAF directive in 2013 but we did not go full blast on the implementation  but put in some requirements in our annual licensing for the league such as youth development, minimum wage, documentation, medicals etc. we therefore look forward to, at this seminar, share the challenges and progress of Nigeria so we can with CAF’s support come up with a process of the Nigeria Club Licensing document that will suit our peculiarities”.

Harraz commended Nigeria for its advancement in Club Licensing regulation and implementation saying that explains why “Nigeria is one of CAF’s top priority member federations hence I am personally attending this seminar so that we can work with you on the licensing implementation”.

“I am trying to see that we have a realistic implementation and not just to have regulations. This is the reason we want to work with Federations to come up with a realistic scheme that can work”, Sharaz stated.

The two -day CAF/NFF Club Licensing seminar will holds on Thursday, August 26 and Friday, August 27 at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja. It is mandatory for all the 20 Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) clubs and other clubs in the lower league that are interested in participating.