ENFORCEMENT OF SPORTS ARBITRAL AWARDS IN NIGERIA: A CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF THE ROLE OF THE NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COURT

Abstract

Sports arbitration only serves its purpose if the awards it produces are actually paid. This article undertakes a doctrinal examination of the enforcement of sports arbitral awards in Nigeria, using three documented disputes, Warri Wolves FC, Nasarawa United FC, and Amarachi Ukaegbu v Heartland Football Club, to test the practical reach of Nigeria's enforcement machinery. It argues that section 254C of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999, which vests the National Industrial Court with jurisdiction over labour disputes, already provides an effective enforcement route, but that this route is invoked inconsistently: an award enforced in one case remains a dead letter in another, purely because claimants did not take the extra procedural step of approaching the National Industrial Court. The article further shows that the requirement in the Nigeria Football Federation Statutes 2010 to exhaust internal arbitration before resort to the ordinary courts has itself been successfully challenged as undomesticated law, and contrasts Nigeria's purely civil enforcement model with the sporting-sanction tools, such as transfer bans, that international federations use to enforce compliance directly. Drawing comparative lessons from enforcement practice in the United Kingdom, China and the United States, the article recommends that Nigeria build automatic referral to the National Industrial Court, and domestic sporting-sanction powers, into the rules of any future National Dispute Resolution Chamber, so that enforcement no longer depends on an individual claimant's knowledge of, or ability to afford, the law.