The Chairman of Lobi Stars FC of Makurdi, Simon Terver Ikya, had in an interview with the Sports Writers Association of Nigeria (SWAN), said when he took over leadership of the club, his target was to return it to the Premiership and that Lobi is a professional football outfit and not a charity organisation. He also spoke on other issues.Terfa Alaghga covered the interview for VoiceSports
Excerpts:
VoiceSports: When you took over the leadership of Lobi Stars FC as Chairman, what was your main target?
Ikya: My target was to gain promotion back to the Premiership, but we couldn’t make it because of the challenges we had.
VoiceSports: What were the challenges?
Ikya: When we came on board, we inherited a Lobi that was billed for failure and we did everything humanly possible to see how we could correct the anomaly but it was very difficult because the team had already started the 2025/26 NNL season under Coach Bala Abubakar as Head Coach, playing their home matches away in Lafia, where an NNL club, FC Basira, was also playing in the same group (Conference C) and it was not easy because they were working against Lobi and if it were not for God who was on Lobi’s side, they would have overridden us. Also, the team’s spirit was low due to some of the issues that it had like the Coach Eugene Agagbe saga. So, there was no way we would have done anything at that time in order to avoid more controversies in the team. More so, we were not conversant with the players that we had met and so we allowed the coach to do his work. But along the line, we discovered that the coach was not good enough for the team in the first place. I am sure if he had remained a little longer, Lobi would have escaped relegation by the whiskers.
VoiceSports: At what point did you notice that the coach, Bala Abubakar, was not really good for the team and he had to leave?
Ikya: Although, long before now, the last straw that broke the camel’s back was when we returned from Gombe, where we had gone to play an NNL match against Doma United FC. That was when we decided not to let him stay any longer because if we did, more issues would have cropped up. That was why we sat down as a management team and decided to place him on an indefinite suspension and we asked his assistant, John Onuh (Abacha) to take over the team as Head Coach.
VoiceSports: How many players did you inherit from the past management?
Ikya: We inherited sixty-seven players and that too was another big problem. From the time of recruitment, some of the players were signed on contract basis, their contracts were not yet terminated and they were still receiving salaries and for that reason, we couldn’t do anything because Lobi was already engulfed in about sixteen cases at the Arbitration Panel of the NFF, ranging from wrongful termination of appointments. Even as I speak, every day I wake up in the morning, I receive a court case against Lobi and that has really been distracting us but we had to put all of that behind us and focus on our target which was to return Lobi to the Premiership. Considering the challenges that we met on the ground, we have tried our best by ending the season in the second position on the League table. For me, coming second in the League was equally as good for us rather than fighting not to go on relegation.
VoiceSports: Are you saying such a large number of players is not good for the team?
Ikya: It was not good for us. It became a distraction to us and even the coaches too couldn’t do anything. Now that the League is over, going forward, we are going to sit down and address the issue. For this season, I had no hands in the recruitment of players because it was done before I came, so people may excuse me for that reason but for the next League season, I will not give any excuses because our target would be to gain promotion to the Premiership and for that reason, we will get the right players who would execute it for us.
VoiceSports: How did signing a large number of players affect running of the club?
Ikya: First and foremost, signing a large number of players in a team that was playing in the NNL is too much and not only that, the wage bill alone was taking a toll on us. You could imagine that at the end of every month you get a subvention and after payment of salaries, you are left with no dime to run the club knowing that you are supposed to run the club for one month before the next subvention comes in. We didn’t even have the money and we were basically bringing money from outside to run the club and we cannot continue with that. Lobi is a professional football outfit and not a charity organisation but they turned it into a charity organisation where you find players that were not even in the main team earning salaries much higher than those who play. But we agreed to manage the situation to the end of the League. But the truth is that, if you have a humane disposition, you will not sack anybody knowing that they all have families. That was why I did not want to send anybody away. In fact, I have tried but at this point, I can’t take it anymore because the contract of most of them will be over any moment from now and they will have to leave.
VoiceSports: But what assurance do you have that your target will be met in the next season?
Ikya: The truth of the matter is that the Governor, Rev Fr Hyacinth Alia has always been very supportive to the team and that is why I am even ashamed of going before him but due to the circumstances in which we found ourselves, there was nothing we would have done to secure the promotion. Truly, we lost the bid for promotion right in the first round of the League, but God helped us. Now that we have the opportunity to recruit our own players and prepare the team well, I don’t think we would have any excuse to give if we don’t gain promotion to the NPFL. I knew that a lot of things were going wrong in the team but if I had started complaining, we would have been distracted. However, I have taken the responsibility for whatever that happened in the 2025/26 NNL Season and now we have put everything that came with the season behind us and are pushing forward.
VoiceSports: How many players do you intend to recruit against the 2026/27 NNL season?
Ikya: I want to confidently tell you that I will not recruit more than thirty players and then five from the youth team of Lobi Stars (U-19), totaling Thirty-Five players. The five players from the youth team are compulsory. We do not need a large number of players in the team and I know that a lot of people will surely complain and also meet with you the sports writers to publish stories against my decision. That is why I am telling you now to know that this is the number of players that we are going to recruit. Meanwhile, the contract for all the players who were signed in the team even before we came on board ranging from one to two years will be terminated at the end of this League season and we will start on a new slate. On this issue too be ready to hear complaints but I will be stubborn and not let anybody muzzle me. I will also not attend to any player that is sent to me by anybody because that is where problems emanate from. I want to take my fate in my hands so that whatever the outcome, I would take the responsibility.
VoiceSports: Are you saying you have such players in Lobi?
Ikya: Yes, most of the players in Lobi today, came through people and if you play them against any top team today, they can’t make any impact. Football is not played by writing a letter that I have a brother for you to consider him. No, let us discover your brother ourselves. I was at the “ikyegh sha ishwa” Unity Cup hosted by Rev Fr Ukeyima, where I identified two good players and were all indigenes of this state.
VoiceSports: Do you give concessions to indigenous players too?
Ikya: For me, there is no indigene in football and if that was to come to play, some of our Benue boys wouldn’t have had the opportunity to play for teams like, Enyimba FC, Rangers FC, Kano Pillars FC etc because these teams don’t pay attention to that but here, every day you wake up you hear some people shouting, “is he an indigene”? And the indigenes are not even ready to play football. You can even imagine that every player wants to play for Lobi Stars FC and how would it be possible for that to happen? We cannot localize football and expect a good result. For as long as you are good irrespective of where you come from and the state needs you, it will engage you but one fact still remains that if you are coming from outside, you should be a good player that would be a regular player and not a bench warmer. I mean, better player than those we have on the ground.
VoiceSports: How have you been able to address some of these challenges that you met on the ground?
Ikya: Yes. One of the major challenges we had was Lobi playing their home matches away from Makurdi, which has been addressed because when the Governor, Rev Fr Hyacinth Alia gave me the go ahead to do everything humanly possible to ensure Lobi’s return to Makurdi, we immediately started working on it by fixing all that we needed to fix at the McCarthy Stadium and from the beginning to the end of January, we tried all we could to make sure that we got the approval to return to Makurdi. That was the first and major hurdle that we crossed because playing away from home was like we were basically playing all our matches away and it was cost intensive. And also, coming back to add a bite into the team was another issue that we addressed and if you all noticed in the second round of the League, Lobi played a lot better than in the first round. What we did was to carefully select twenty-five players and categorize them into Team A and the rest into Team B and after the categorization, we started doing well and even won our last match in the first round.
VoiceSports: How much debt did you inherit from Lobi?
Ikya: I can’t even tell how much myself. When I say I don’t know the debt profile of Lobi, it is because every day I wake up, I see new letters. A situation was recorded in the morning last Thursday, outside the gate of the McCarthy Stadium, bailiffs came and after the players alighted from the club’s Coaster bus, they seized it and it is now at the premises of the High Court. This is a case that I did not know anything about and I was later made to understand that the judgement of the case was passed on the 25th November, 2024 and it was not in the handover note to me, I was equally not aware of it because nobody told me about it.
VoiceSports: Did you try to find out what caused the seizure of the bus?
Ikya: The cause was traced to Dominic Iorfa whom they said had borrowed from someone and didn’t pay back and they took the case to court. With such a case now, how do I give you the debt profile of the club? Because of a whopping sum of Forty-Seven Million Naira, Lobi’s bus is parked at the premises of the High court and over a judgement that I know nothing about and nobody mentioned it to me. If only they had mentioned it to me I would have negotiated it with the man’s lawyers and possibly come to an agreement. Could you believe that on that day of the incident, some people were saying I was the one that had borrowed the money? I even began receiving calls from people who wanted to confirm if I knew or were connected to the incident.
VoiceSports: What have you done to reclaim the bus from the High Court?
Ikya: I have spoken to the lawyers and I am trying to put everything together and then present to the governor, all the issues that we have had on the ground. So you can see how many challenges that we have and that is why I can’t specifically tell how much Lobi’s debt profile is but I know that it is above Two-Hundred Million Naira.
VoiceSports: How have you been able to tackle the cases at the Arbitration Panel of the NFF?
Ikya: We have tried to address some of them because when they came, we had to include them in the wage bill since we are part of the system. The reason for the cases emanated from the past management which did not pay their salaries and they took them to the Arbitration Panel. We have started addressing some of them while some are pending, like the case of Daniel Amokachi whose contract I have not set my eyes on, because there was no contract signed between Lobi and Amokachi. All that his agent tendered before the club’s lawyer when he requested for it was just a document committing Lobi to the tune of Fifty-Two Million Naira. For the white-man too, there was also no contract but it reflected in that same document which was just a paper that had no signature appended to it. Because of the singular document we lost the case to Amokachi but as we speak, I have neither set my eyes on his contract papers nor was it handed over to me but of course he did work for the club for five months and he was meant to receive his pay because you cannot work and not be paid. Fortunately, enough, when I presented the case to the Governor, he asked me to do a thorough investigation on the matter and get back to him and now that everything is over, we are preparing to hand over the documents and everything that we faced to him.
VoiceSports: Does the club still have other pending cases to tackle at the NFF?
Ikya: There are a lot of cases at the NFF, that every day I wake up, I receive a call from them that we wrongfully terminated someone’s contract and we are to pay to such a person this and that amount.
VoiceSports: As Chairman of Lobi Stars FC, what is your prayer point for the club?
Ikya: All I pray for every day I wake up is for God to give me the wisdom, to be able to run this Lobi effectively in the right way. It seems most people have forgotten that I served as Team Manager of Lobi, over seven years ago and we recorded successes during that period because we closed all our ears to a lot of things. During the era of the late Tersoo Luga as Chairman, we played the Champions League, during Dominic Iorfa we played in the Confederation Cup and the WAFU Cup and during the time of Mike Idoko, we also played in the Champions League. So, when I hear people say I don’t have the experience, I wonder. I have been on the football scene since 1999 and served on several committees of the NFF, headed the marketing department of Lobi, served as the Team Manager and by the grace of God, I am now the Chairman of Lobi, and still people say, I lack the experience. That is so sad.
VoiceSports: How do you intend to generate funds for the club?
Ikya: Right now, I am working on sponsorship of kits and I pray that it sails through and that will help us to reduce spending of money on buying of kits and at least it would somehow generate money for the team. I am also trying to see if I can work on the official water partners of Lobi, a partnership with an energy drink company and most of all, we are looking for a major sponsor that we would carry on our jerseys but because we are playing in the Lower Division it is difficult and by the grace of God, we will get a couple of them and by the time we slash down a lot of things here, we would be able to free out funds to do other things as well.
VoiceSports: We heard that salaries of the team were delayed, what was the cause?
Ikya: It was simply because we were trying to comply with the government’s directives of growing the NOVUS Bank and because we wanted to move our accounts to it, when the Union Bank tried sending the salaries to it, it kept bouncing back but we have resolved the issue and people have since started receiving their salaries. Even at that I have heard that some people went ahead to report me that I have diverted people’s salaries. I can’t imagine myself doing that and that is why at the end of the day, I don’t have the funds to run the club. Well, as a leader, you face such challenges because it is not everybody that would like you and such things don’t bother me at all because for as long as the person I am working for is satisfied with what I am doing and the Benue people are appreciating what I am doing for them, I don’t care about any other person. I don’t have enemies, I came with a clean heart but anybody that tries or thinks of crossing my path, I could be a lion when it gets to that. I know what we faced to bring this team back to Makurdi and some people here are working against us because they never wanted the team to return to Makurdi.
VoiceSports: What is your advice for members of the SWAN?
Ikya: Anything you hear about me or the club, confirm from me and I would explain and if you cannot reach me, I have the Director of Media, Emmanuel Uja and the Principal Media Officer, Austin Tyowua who could give you the right information that you crave for. I am for everybody and I am not here to fight anybody but the only thing that would make me angry will be when you hear a rumour about me and you don’t hear my own side of the story before going ahead to publish it. That would mean you want to tarnish my image and I would equally want to come after you. But I believe that as partners in progress, we can work together and build a professional club that we are all yearning for. Lobi is not mine but for the state. I am only fortunate to head it at this time. The system I want to set for the club, is such that nobody can come and run it as a one-man club anymore. I am equally not running Lobi as a dictator.
