Relegation/Financial Problems
The final title for Stores came in 1992. However, the next year Stationery Stores were controversially relegated because of failing to complete their fixtures, not because they finished on a relegation spot. The team continued the next five seasons in the second division. However, in March 1998, the NFA was compelled to cancel all outstanding Pro League Second Division games involving Stationery Stores following an injunctive order issued by a Lagos High Court restraining Stationery Stores from playing any Pro League games pending the resolution of a lawsuit filed before the court to determine the ownership and control of the club. This action constituted the culmination of a long-festering ownership dispute involving two of the Adebajo siblings (each of whom was a director of The Nigeria Office of Stationery Stores Supply): Gloria Adebajo-Fraser whom exercised administrative control over the club's affairs throughout the course of the 1997 football season and her half-brother Adetilewa Adebajo whom (with the apparent blessing of the NFA) assumed defacto control of the club's management for the succeeding 1998 football season. The lingering management crises and festering lawsuits so decimated and depleted this much-celebrated clubside that, throughout the course of the 1998 football season, its players were compelled to campaign without the benefit of formal contracts, sign-on fees, bonuses or club-supplied playing equipment. The team was demoted to the amateur ranks in 1999 after the club had been suspended nine matches in the 1998 season due to the family wranglings. They returned to the professional level in summer 2004 but were relegated after failing to make several games and fielding several unregistered players.
Read more about this topic: Stationery Stores F.C.
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