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Harrison Jalla, president of the National Association of Nigeria Footballers (NANF), will today officially take the case filed by his players’ union against the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) out of court.

NANF had sued the NFF, as well as several other officials including the recently suspended FIFA executive committee member Amos Adamu, to a Federal High Court sitting in Lagos in respect of the disputed August 26 elections into the NFF’s executive committee.

NANF’s action however went contrary to FIFA regulations and was one of the sore points listed by the football world body when they recently suspended Nigeria from international football at the start of the month; a suspension that was later lifted by the Switzerland based organisation.

FIFA’s lifting of the suspension was however preceded by an agreement by NANF to settle their grievance against the NFF out of court following an October 6 meeting in Lagos with some of the parties involved in the case, most notably Adamu.

In spite of this, NANF’s decision doesn’t become official until a pronouncement by the court, and that is what Jalla will be seeking to do today when the case resumes for hearing at the Federal High Court in Lagos.

Notice of discontinuance

“We are filing for a notice of discontinuance as we are putting the interest of Nigeria first,” Jalla told NEXT. “We gave our guarantee to FIFA that we will resolve the matter out of court and that is what we intend to do so we can put the matter behind us.” As part of the agreement reached at the meeting where NANF agreed to an out of court settlement, certain conditions had to be met by the NFF top of which is an amendment of the statutes of the NFF to affect the composition of its congress whose number was considerably reduced prior to the August 26 NFF board elections.

In a bid to get this implemented, Jalla and other NANF officials were at the weekend in Abuja to meet with officials of the National Sports Commission (NSC), as well as members of the House of Representatives Committee on Sports, and the NFF.

Jalla refused to divulge details of the meeting but he expressed optimism regarding the implementation of the changes to the NFF’s statutes.

Asked whether NANF’s decision to withdraw the case would have any effect on the court’s earlier decision to nullify the NFF elections that ushered in Aminu Maigari as the football body’s, Jalla said:

“That is no longer our business. The court has ruled on that and our business now is to take the case out of court in line with FIFA’s directive.” Pull quote: our business now is to take the case out of court in line with FIFA’s directive