- Story of alleged crisis, unaccountability in NFF
Believe it or not, Nigerian football is going through a difficult time under the leadership of the Amaju Melvin Pinnick-led Nigerian Football Federation.
Things have really fallen apart and the centre could no longer hold the crumbling pillar. Despite the recent victory of the female national team, the Super Falcons, at the last African Women Nations’ Cup championship in Cameroon and the improved performances of the Super Eagles in the 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifiers, Nigerian football is indeed facing serious challenges in administration and finance management.
There have been accusation of fraudulent practices and lack of accountability, leveled against the current NFF board. The latest of such accusations was the bombshell the Minister of Sports, Solomon Dalung, threw during the last NFF Annual Assembly in Lagos, where he asked the NFF to account for the $1.1 million FIFA development grant.
FIFA had stopped further financial support to Nigeria, for lack of proper documentation of how $802,000 out of the funds released to NFF was expended.
Dalung, however, ordered the NFF to provide him with detailed information of receipts, disbursements and application of the FIFA development grant accordingly.
In addition, he said a reputable audit firm should be appointed urgently to check the account books of the NFF, to ensure that funds are judiciously expended, stressing that the audit report must be made public to promote transparency and build credibility.
Football pundits had raised the alarm when the NFF President, Pinnick, signified intention to vie for an executive position in the Confederation of Africa Football, at a time Nigeria’s football is in comatose.
The nation’s female national team, the Super Falcons, actually exposed the lapses in the Federation after their victory at the African Women Nations’ Cup contest in Cameroon, and the subsequent non-payment of their bonuses and allowances. It took the courage of the Super Falcons, The girls were courageous to stage a walking protest to the National Assembly, before their entitlements were paid by the government.
Despite the recent victory of the Super Falconsww at the last African Women Nations’ Cup championship in Cameroon and the improved performances of the Super Eagles, Nigerian football is indeed facing serious challenges in administration and finance management
Not long ago, Pinnick, alleged went on an ego trip and disclosed that he spent a whooping over N50 million to host FIFA President, Gianni Infantino, and 18 federation presidents from across Africa in Nigeria.
In September 2014, Mr Pinnick was elected president of the NFF under very rather controversial circumstances, and he pledged to attract corporate Nigeria to a sector that has continued to be financially dependent on the government.
But halfway through his fouryear tenure at the NFF, major sports sponsors pulled out, and new sponsors have not been signed up. The Federation has been crippled by mounting debts and it now goes cap in hand to government for more funds.
Nigeria’s biggest football brand, the Super Eagles, and the other teams, the Flying Eagles, the Flamingoes, the Falconets as well as an experimental Nigeria Under-19 team were not left out of the resultant effect of the financial hardship that has overtaken Nigerian football.
Most national team coaches have not been paid this year, and the NFF needed a special N100 million bailout from the government, before the Super Eagles could honour a World Cup qualifier against Zambia, and also a great deal of support from the Akwa Ibom State government, before the team could host Algeria in the second World Cup qualifier in the series.
Yet, NFF chartered a plane ‘through private arrangements’ at N42 million to fly in and out of Cameroon for the Women’s AFCON final, but could not pay the players and coaches their entitlements. Also, results under the Pinnickled Federation have been most disastrous – Nigeria had failed to qualify for the AFCON on two straight occasions, and both the Flying Eagles and Golden Eaglets have failed to qualify for their respective AFCONs for the first time in a long while.
It is against this gloomy backdrop that Pinnick now wishes to embark on his selfish quest to sit on the highest decision-making body of African football, CAF, even against wiser counsel.
This clearly shows that Pinnick has been managing Nigerian football through his whims and caprices and hence the sorry state of the game. Members of the NFF congress shocked Nigerians when they passed vote of confidence on Pinnick, after money was alleged to have exchanged hands, to further support their selfish interests at the Annual General Assembly in Lagos.
They were all willing tools in the conspiracy and fraud that brought Pinnick to office two years ago, and had failed again to redress the mistake they made to vote in Pinnick in the first instance.
But instead, the NFF board dared the sports minister by endorsing Pinnick to contest a CAF executive committee position, while also insisting that their books have already been audited, and hence there was no need for any other audit, in defiance of the minister’s order for a fresh audit of the NFF books.
Former NFF Secretary-General, Bolaji Ojo-Oba, had said that declaration of a state of emergency in Nigerian football is the panacea to the rot in the round-leather game administration and also to address the court litigations cases between Chris Giwa and the NFF, which had dragged the game into ridicle. He believed that the Giwa/NFF tango is not a crisis, but a mere misunderstanding, which could be solved in-house.
The former official of CAF added that elders in the football circle should gather together to proffer a lasting solution, by speaking with both parties. Ojo-Oba had also raised an allegation that football administrators and club managers connive with referees to influence matches in their favour with cash in a winat-all-cost syndrome.
Reacting to this allegation, the President of Nigeria Referees Association, Tade Azeez, had asked Ojo-Oba, to come out with facts on the allegation. This was just as former chief coach of the Super Eagles, Adegboye Onigbinde, expressed worry over the present parlous state of Nigerian football and called on football authorities to find lasting solution to the unending drama in the NFF.
He was also expectant that President Muhammadu Buhari will give the sports sector the desired attention that would see sports in the country soar before the end of his four-year tenure. Meanwhile, former chairman of NFA, Anthony Kojo-Williams, said, “The biggest problem of our football is the lack of a football philosophy for the national teams by the NFF.
There is no technical roadmap guiding the Eagles and that is why we are where we are. Those guys in the NFF don’t have a clue as to where they want to take the Eagles, not to talk of how to achieve that target. “All they do is just talk and talk themselves out, rather than work their socks out.
Top-level football administration goes beyond talking. It entails having a vision and knowing how to put the vision into reality, by ensuring that the coaches and teams have identical system of playing, with a mindset of dominating, not the whimper teams that we have now.”
