Nigeria Content Online

The
Nigeria Football Federation, says it has not in any way acted wrongly in
the matter of the proposed friendly match between the Super Eagles and
the Argentine national team.

The acting general
secretary of the federation, Musa Ahmadu, said on Monday in Abuja that
the claim by Belgium-based Nigerian match agent, Julius Owen Ighodaro
that the federation ‘betrayed’ him by giving the right to negotiate the
match to another agent after he had opened discussions with them was
untrue.

Ahmadu said though
the federation issued Ighodaro a letter of mandate to discuss the
possibility of such a match, the agent had long come back to the
federation to say it was not possible.

Ighodaro had at the weekend accused the federation of unfair practice noting that:

“I have been on that
game for three months now with three other agents. World Eleven gave
exclusive right to one Justin Ado who sold the idea to them that
Argentina can train in Africa to prepare for Copa America Nations Cup
And Justin contacted one Nouma Pierre, a Cameroonian, who contacted me. I
brought the game to NFF (Federation) on platter of Gold and we had been
negotiating only for the NFF to push me aside at the last minute and
give it to their agent and wrapped things up with Guinness.

“I have three
letters from NFF the last one dated 14th February, which they accepted
to play and requested I send a contract which I did and they promised to
study it. And they betrayed me and gave the game to their agent.”

No deal

Responding yesterday to the allegation, Ahmadu said:

“It is true we
issued Ighodaro a letter of mandate to discuss with Argentina, after he
came to us to claim that Argentina would be on a tour of Africa and that
he could get them to play the Super Eagles. We therefore issued him the
letter of mandate to see how this could be done. However, Ighodaro
later came back to inform us that Argentina would no longer be willing
to play Nigeria. At this point, we duly considered the matter dead and
buried.

“Afterwards, our
sponsors, Guinness came to us with valid papers that they had the
consent of Argentina and we signed the papers. Everybody is happy about
what Guinness has been able to do and the game would definitely go ahead
on Wednesday, 1st June, 2011.

“The letter of
mandate is something that we had given to a number of people in the
past, to discuss on our behalf with willing Federations for the
possibility of friendly games. We had issued the same Ighodaro a similar
mandate to discuss with Gabon on the possibility of bringing that
country’s national team here for an international friendly against the
Super Eagles on 29th March, 2011 and he was unable to pull it off.

“The mandate we
signed with Ighodaro was a one-off thing, and at no time did we sign any
contract with him concerning the match. We are therefore not
contractually liable or committed to him or any of his collaborators.

Ahmadu said the football federation is now extremely careful about
the kind of people we have relationship with concerning organisation of
matches.