From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has come under severe attacks, criticisms and counter criticisms since the news broke that FIFA has sanctioned Nigeria for fielding an ineligible player, Shehu Abdullahi, during the 2018 World Cup qualifier match against Algeria.
FIFA’s disciplinary committee had fined the football federation 6,000 Swiss Francs (about N2,177,280) and deducted three points for fielding the ineligible player during the November 10, 2017 inconsequential World Cup qualifying match against Algeria.
The statement read; “The sanction relates to the player, Abdullahi Shehu, failing to serve the automatic one-match suspension imposed on him as a result of receiving a caution in two separate matches of the same competition.
“This sanction however bears no impact on the final result of the preliminary competition for the FIFA World Cup since Nigeria had already qualified (and Algeria eliminated) before the match took place.”
Although the deduction had no impact on the final result of the preliminary competition as FIFA explicitly stated, however, all hell, understandably, had broken loose since the report of the decision hit the Nigeria media wave.
All manners of abuses, attacks have been hauled endlessly, especially at the eggheads of the football federation, for gross negligence to duty. Blames have been traded among the federation staff and the executive committee of the federation over who actually deserved to be sanctioned for the elementary mistake.
For many, it was a case of collective responsibility and collective failure on the entire staff and management of the Glass House, yet to others; it must be narrowed as a failure of the secretariat, the technical department, technical sub-committee and the team’s technical crew. As the blame game ranges, the unanswered questions are, did FIFA write any formal letter to notify the NFF about the ineligibility of the player? Did FIFA channel the notification letter appropriately? Was it a case of negligence of duty or sabotage to underscore cheap point in the obvious and cold war ranging among the disgruntled staff and some members of the NFF executive committee?
Appropriate or inappropriate rooting of FIFA correspondent
From the explanations given by the NFF second vice president, Shehu Dikko, the letter from FIFA encountered a force majeure due to the admission of the technical officer in charge in the hospital over heart problem and regrettably the misinterpretation of the rules of the game in assuming that the first yellow card eclipsed with the preliminary rounds.
According to Dikko; “Abdulahi Shehu got yellow card right from the first match in the preliminary rounds of the qualifiers’ away game against Swaziland. When the draws for the group stage were made, the technical staff assumed that the cards from the preliminaries will not count going forward and didn’t take proper records.
“Indeed, throughout the qualifier series, Adullahi Shehu has never been counted as on yellow even by the match documents such as when we played Cameroon Mikel Obi, Victor Moses and Balogun were all put on notice that they are on a yellow. There was even a meeting before the game on how to manage their yellow cards so as not to miss the decisive next match but Abdullahi was never in the mix.
“He got a yellow card from the penultimate match against Zambia which is two years since the first match where he got the first yellow during the preliminary rounds against Swaziland in November 2015 under Sunday Oliseh and played the Zambia match in November 2017.
“FIFA sent notice after the match against Zambia that Shehu is suspended for Algeria match, but sent the email directly to the technical officer in charge who incidentally was hospitalized at that period with a serious heart problem and was not on emails and couldn’t have seen it.
“On match day against Algeria, neither the match Commissioner nor the away team were aware and Abdulahi played the match without any protest or notice from either side. Algerian never protested as they too were not aware but FIFA sent NFF a query to ask why the player played.
“NFF duly responded with proofs that the notice was sent to an email account of the hospitalized technical staff with proofs. The FIFA disciplinary committee met and decided that since previous emails have always been sent to the same account and were acted upon, the notice was valid and sanctioned Nigeria,” he explained.
Dikko however admitted that: “Yes, it was really a bad mistake, but thank God it was not costly and NFF is already reorganising the Technical and Competitions departments to ensure this horrendous mistake never happened again as this mistake is clearly lack of diligence on the technical and the competitions departments.”
Obviously, the biggest takeaway in Dikko’s submission should be the admittance that the horrendous mistake was lack of due diligence on the technical department. The issue of whether FIFA actually wrote to inform NFF about Abdullahi’s ineligibility is not any doubt.
However, combination of factors like the force majeure the health status of the technical officer created, in addition to negligence and poor attentions to details, resulted in the situation Nigeria found itself.
What actually heightened the curiosity of soccer followers is whether any other management staff received the email apart from the hospitalised technical staff, why should official correspondent of such magnitude be sent to a personal email and ultimately, does it mean that the federation does not have official email with a staff dedicated to treat important official correspondences?