By Andrew Warshaw
March 15 – Twenty-fours before the most hotly anticipated election in African football history, Nigerian authorities have denied they have ordered their highly influential FA to vote for Issa Hayatou as he bids to cling on to power for another four-year term.
With political chicanery in full swing, agency reports say the Nigerian government has mandated NFF chief Amaju Pinnick to switch his allegiance from Madagascan challenger Ahmad Ahmad to the veteran Hayatou who is seeking to extend his 29-year reign at the top of African football.
Intriguingly, Pinnick, who has been at the forefront of the campaign to dislodge Hayatou, is also contesting a place on the Confederation of African Football (CAF) executive committee on the same day as the presidential election in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Refuting reports that it had intervened, the Nigerian Sports Ministry said it simply clarified that it had only advised Pinnick, to “preserve the special relationship between Nigeria and Cameroon.”
Code, of course, for diplomatic and political pressure since both Nigeria and Cameroon are fighting Boko Haram insurgency in the region.
Indeed, sports Ministry spokesperson Nneka Anibeze was quoted as saying that the sports minister Solomon Dalung “believes that Hayatou’s Cameroun has been and will continue to be more useful to Nigeria than Madagascar, but that does not translate to an order on the NFF to vote for him.”
Only last month Dalung had told local media that Pinnick would be given carte blance to vote for either candidate. “We believe that he is in a better position to know about the politics of CAF than all of us,” Dalung said at the time.
But tellingly Dalung added: “He should as a matter of fact think of what the country stands to gain from whatever decision he takes concerning this election. I also urge him to eschew personal interest if any, as the nation’s interest should come first in whatever we do.”
Pinnick’s backing for Ahmad has already put him at loggerheads with his own federation, but he insists he has a mandate to back the challenger who is also understood to be the preferred choice of FIFA president Gianni Infantino, already in situ for the CAF presidential election. Local reports say FIFA number two Fatma Samoura, who joined FIFA last year from the UN Development Programme in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, is reported to have privately told the Nigerian government that the country’s support for Ahmad is “key” to topping Hayatou.
Whilst he has the backing of the 14-member Council of Southern African Football Associations, that is 13 short of what Ahmad needs to change the landscape of African football. Whether Pinnick obeys his government or presses enough flesh to back his man could prove pivotal.
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