By Mark Baber
October 24 – The Nigerian High Court sitting in Jos on Thursday held that the disputed September 30 elections for the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) Board, in which Amaju Pinnick was elected President, were invalid, upholding the disputed August 26 election in which Chris Giwa was elected President.
The ruling will come as no surprise to regular readers of Insideworldfootball, despite the efforts of Pinnick and his cohorts to ignore previous court orders, to establish “facts on the ground” and the support lent to the September 30 elections by FIFA.
The NFF President prior to Giwa’s election, Aminu Maigari, survived a number of challenges to his rule thanks to FIFA support and FIFA intervened repeatedly in the electoral process to find a replacement.
FIFA has warned that it will suspend Nigeria in the event that any party interferes with the election of the new board. If FIFA were to follow through with this threat today then the Nigerian Women’s team who are playing Cameroon in the final of the 2014 Africa Women Championships in Namibia on Saturday could be the first victims.
The Pinnick-headed NFF’s first vice president, Barrister Seyi Akinwunmi told reporters: “We have been notified of the ruling of the court, which was made in spite of our filing for a Preliminary Objection concerning the jurisdiction of the court.
“However, our lawyers have gone to work immediately the order was made. We are appealing the ruling and also filing for Stay of Execution of the order.”
At this stage it is not clear who is funding the legal action Akinwunmi speaks of or how quickly the Giwa-headed NFF will move to re-establish de facto control over NFF matters.
With the Giwa faction’s solicitors having expressed a preference for those who organised the September 30t elections to be imprisoned for contempt of court, it seems unlikely that the feuding sides in Nigeria will come to a compromise. It seems similarly unlikely the Nigerian judicial authorities will roll over and accept FIFA’s diktats over their own decisions.
FIFA will undoubtedly feel obliged to follow through on their threat to ban Nigeria, but will also be aware that such an action will have severe consequences for African football and will inevitably be challenged in the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) where Giwa says he would have a powerful case.
In the event of a ban, the issue with regards to Stephen Keshi may be moot, but the Pinnick Board sacked Keshi from his position as national team coach last week whilst Giwa said he was keeping him on.
Keshi himself made the observation that he wasn’t sacked as he never had a contract – and that Nigeria should stop seeing itself as a serious football nation because it is still lagging behind in many vital areas needed to attain that level.
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