Revealed! Coca-Cola, Aiteo Sponsorship Funds Paid To NFF Missing

The Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, is not transparent enough when it comes to accountability as many sponsorship funds paid by companies are treated like 'black market'.

BSN Sports can reveal that the payment of partnership funds by two major sponsors and partners of the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, are shrouded with secrecy as payments of Coca-cola and Aiteo Group of Company were declared missing.

Aiteo Group paid its first of five years sponsorship funds into Financial Derivative Company (FDC) FCMB US Dollars Account in 2017. And since then, the sponsor has stopped paying into the account while FDC remain their financial consultant till date. This was done in secrecy as the monies could not be traced to the NFF's account nor Treasury Single Account (TSA) with Central Bank of Nigeria - the two accounts where the monies are supposed to be paid into.

During the course of the investigation, we also discovered that Coca-cola payment of $800,000 sponsorship funds for the year 2019 was missing in the FDC Dollars account where the money has always been paid into.

However, while the 2019 sponsorship payment can not be found in the account, the 2020 partnership fund was seen paid into the Financial Derivative account.

On March 6th, 2020 when the funds reappears, Coca-Cola paid Eight hundred thousand US dollars ($800,000) equivalent of (N310,400,000 naira) as the sponsorship deal for the year 2020 into FDC account.

Investigation carried out by BSN Sports showed that Financial Derivative Company (FDC) in turn paid the sum of One hundred and sixty thousand ($160,000) into Mediterranean Sports Ltd account on 9th April, 2020 as the 20% for the services as the Marketing Agent in a deal the company knows nothing about.

Also, on 21st April, 2020, another One hundred and Sixty thousand US dollars ($160,000) was paid into Mediterranean Sports Ltd account, totalling $320,000 (N124,160,000) One hundred and Twenty Four million, one hundred and sixty thousand naira making it 40% as against the agreement.

Meanwhile, Coca-Cola signed the sponsorship deal in 2006 during Ibrahim Galadima as NFF president but 20% is being paid to Mediterranean's account that did nothing about the deal.

NFF second vice president, Shehu Dikko was linked with Mediterranean Sports Ltd as one of the Directors of the company.

It is a known fact that, it is against the regulation of Treasury Single Account (TSA) for Nigeria Football Federation to warehouse funds with Financial Derivative Company who is not a bank but financial consultant. The NFF engaged FDC as financial consultant in 2014.

It is also wrong for the NFF to engage Mediterranean Sports Ltd as Marketing Agent as that leads to conflict of interest.

The question in the lips of Nigerian is, where are the missing monies paid into?