NFF leadership crisis: I won’t comment–Pinnick

Amaju Pinnick, the new First Vice-President of the Confederation of African Football (CAF), on Tuesday in St Petersburg insisted that he was still keeping mum on the Nigerian football leadership crisis.

Pinnick, until some days ago President of Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) he was not going to speak on the federation’s leadership crisis for now.

NAN reports that the Pinnick-led NFF Executive Committee was removed after Youths and Sports Minister Solomon Dalung asked the federation to obey a Supreme Court order on the federation’s 2014 elections.

The Chris Giwa group, which had engaged the NFF leadership in a leadership tussle since 2014, had secured an ex-parte motion directing the Pinnick-led group to obey the court order.

Based on the motion by a Jos court, Dalung had directed NFF to comply, and this had led to the Giwa group taking over the NFF secretariat in Abuja.

Since then Pinnick, who as a member of FIFA Organising Committee is presently on duty in Russia at the 2018 FIFA World Cup,has remained silent on the issue.

However members of both groups have been engaged in a cross-fire of accusations and contentions.

“I am not going to say anything at all. Please, at least for now, I am not saying anything,’’ Pinnick told NAN at the St Petersburg Arena.

He said he was at the moment in Russia only on duty for FIFA and would rather not allow the matter to bother him for now.

“I am on duty here for FIFA at the moment, and will ratgher focus on that at the moment,’’ Pinnick who was the Match Commissioner of the France versus Belgium semi-final match in St Petersburg on Tuesday said.

NAN reports that NFF’s lawyer, Festus Keyamo, has been leading the defence for Pinnick’s position on the matter since the issue snowballed into another round of crisis some days ago.