Stop Threatening Nigeria with FIFA Ban.... Onigbinde Tells Pinnick, Others

Stop threatening Nigeria with FIFA ban...Onigbinde tells Pinnick, others By Niyi Busari Former Super Eagles coach Festus Adegboye Onigbinde has stated that those championing the call for FIFA to ban Nigeria are purely doing it from selfish point of view. Onigbinde who declared this while on a telephone chat with www.bsnsports.com.ng lamented that Pinnick and his followers could go the extent of calling on FIFA to ban their country just because of their personal interest. The CAF instructor who was among the football stakeholders who had a meeting with the minister of Youth and Sports in Abuja on Wednesday noted that such call is so unnecessary. He stated that Pinnick's board and others before them had and are still recklessly flaunting the FIFA rules without anybody calling on FIFA to ban Nigeria. "There is nobody in Nigeria who is bigger than the Nigeria government and those who are talking about FIFA ban and statute, I want to tell them that i can quote thousands of FIFA statutes which Nigeria has been flaunting. But some people want to blackmail Nigeria by threatening us with FIFA ban for their own personal interest." "For instance, article 19 of FIFA statute says that.... The governing board of any football body including clubs must be democratically elected..... How many clubs in this country fulfill that? This means we don't have one single football club by FIFA statute. All we have are parastatal and private business." "Another section says that....Any football body must have a registered office.....How many clubs have that? I can go on and on and on. But this particular situation at the NFF headquarters is being used to blackmail Nigeria." He argued that it is unreasonable to respect the regulation of an international body to the detriment of the Nigeria constitution and judicial system. "Talking about FIFA ban, I am not a lawyer but is it unreasonable to respect the regulation of an international body to the extent of superseding Nigeria constitution and judicial system? Is it proper? Does it make sense? Are we surrendering the Nigeria sovereignty ? There are a lots of things going wrong' he concluded.