NPL a victim of its own success

The suspension this week of the Namibia Premier League (NPL) by the Fifa normalisation committee currently in charge of the Namibia Football Association (NFA) cannot go unchallenged.

The NPL is being forced to veer from its own constitution by keeping relegated teams in the country's premier league. The NFA, the custodian of first division football, failed to ensure action took place in that tier last season; hence, there were no teams promoted to the premier league.

That there was no first division football last season was the failure of the NFA alone.

The NPL are now paying the price of being more organised and for having successfully held a league campaign, where a winner emerged and relegation occurred, as is the practice globally, and as per the existing laws of football in the country.

The Fifa normalisation committee has clearly overstayed its welcome.

We had expected that the professionals leading this committee would advocate for the respect of statutes across the entire spectrum of local football, and not the opposite.

The NPL even suggested that its constitution can be amended to allow for the inclusion of the relegated teams.

The Fifa committee would have none of it. They want the law to remain as is, and be defied.

With this level of mediocrity, the Fifa committee is pushing us to the edge of becoming a banana republic, where laws must not only be respected when it best suits us.

Imagine if the same autocratic tendencies were replicated in our body politic.

Next would be politicians saying they will no longer observe term limits, as is law. And then what?