Some Nigerian football stakeholders say they are set to engage former and current officials of the Nigeria Football Federation in a fresh legal battle over alleged corruption and misappropriation of football development funds, The PUNCH reports.
The funds, according to the stakeholders, include FIFA’s $8.6m 2014 World Cup grant, $10m 2018 World Cup grant among other streams of FIFA and CAF developmental funds, as well as sponsorship money from corporate bodies between 2014 and 2022.
Chairman of Professional Footballers Association of Nigeria Task Force, Harrison Jalla, in a statement obtained by our correspondent on Monday, alleged that the case was stalled by former Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami.
According to him, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission had investigated the said NFF officials, which resulted in seizure of the suspects properties.
“Fresh petitions have been lodged with the new chairman of the ICPC, the current Attorney-General of the Federation, the Senate President, the Speaker, House of Representatives and the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu,” Jalla said in the statement.
Jalla added that the body discovered that some of the funds were warehoused and withdrawn through private companies.
“The funds were warehoused with a private company that is called Financial Derivatives. And there is another company Mediterranean Sports. There is clear evidence that those funds were being pulled out of the system though Mediterranean Sports. There is evidence to back it up.
“In the course of trying to justify how they spent some of the monies, they said they played a match against Bolivia and they allocated about $1m for that,” he told The PUNCH.
“They also said they spent about $500 for CAF congress but CAF wrote back and said no, that all their meetings were all-expense paid.”
Meanwhile, general secretary of the NFF, Mohammed Sanusi, declined comments on the issue.
