Nigeria Content Online

FIFA
Executive Committee member, Amos Adamu, and four other officials of the
football governing body may have to wait a while before knowing the
outcome of their appeal.

The other officials
are Tahitian Reynald Temarii; Slim Aloulou, a Tunisian lawyer who
chaired FIFA’s disputes panel; Amadou Diakite of Mali, a FIFA referees
committee member; and Ahongalu Fusimalohi, chief executive of the Tonga
federation. FIFA’s independent appeals committee, chaired by Bermuda
Football Association boss, Larry Mussenden, also a former attorney
general in the Caribbean island’s government, commenced hearings in
Zurich, Switzerland on Wednesday. Expectations were that the hearing
would last for two days with the outcome expected to be made Thursday.
However, nothing of such emerged from FIFA’s Zurich headquarters as at
the time this paper went to press late yesterday.

Uncertainty

There was however a
contradictory reports on some news web sites to the effect that FIFA
will not be announcing the outcome of the hearing until two weeks. A
number of these sites, based in New Zealand and the surrounding
islands, most notably Dominion Post, Manawatu Standard and Taranaki
Daily News, reported that Temarii had told Fairfax Media that FIFA will
take more than two weeks to announce his fate and those of the other
officials appealing corruption and ethics bans. Fairfax, in January,
revealed that FIFA had formally written to Temarii, clearing him of all
corruption charges.

However, in an
email sent to Fairfax this week, Temarii said the Appeal Committee
chairman, Mussenden, had warned him not to expect anything until
February 18. “An announcement will be made in 15 days, according to the
chairman of the Appeal Committee,” Temarii was quoted to have said. If
the report is anything to go by, then the result ought to be out before
the February 23 annual assembly of Africa’s football governing body,
CAF scheduled for Khartoum, Sudan. And should Adamu win his appeal,
then the 58-year-old would be eligible to re-contest his position on
the FIFA executive committee at the annual assembly where delegates
will choose two of the continent’s four representatives to the world
body’s 24-member Executive Committee.

No solidarity

Adamu is listed as
a candidate pending his appeal, with compatriot Ibrahim Galadima on
standby should FIFA stand by its original decision to ban him for three
years. Meanwhile, the acting secretary general of the Nigeria Football
Federation (NFF), Musa Amadu, has denied reports that the trip embarked
upon by him and Aminu Maigari, the NFF’s president, to Switzerland was
a mark of solidarity for Adamu. According to Amadu, Maigari and himself
had gone to Zurich to honour a meeting that had been long scheduled
over Nigeria’s desire for more FIFA goal projects, even though they
departed on the morning of the commencement of the appeal.

“It is important to put the facts straight,” he said. “We are not
here to be by the side of Adamu. It happened that our visit coincided
with Adamu’s appeal that was being heard at the FIFA Headquarters.
Remember that we had long sought for a meeting with the FIFA President
(Joseph Blatter). Originally, we got an appointment for January 26, but
we were eventually alerted that Blatter would be otherwise engaged and
another date had to be worked out. That was how it came to be Thursday,
February 3.”