The office of Attoney General of Federation is to harmonize the Court
cases and petitions against officials of the Nigeria Football
Federation (NFF), to determine the veracity of the issue.
The office of the AGF is also currently reviewing a petition
concerning the fact that the cases and petitions against NFF spread
across all investigative agencies are similar, from the same
petitioners/witnesses and against the same persons. This has
necessitated the need for the independent review.
This formed the kernel of the submission of the counsel from the
Office of the AGF at the Federal Capital Territory High Court on
Tuesday 22nd, October 2019 when the court resumed hearing on an
application for amendment brought by the counsel to the EFCC to have
the NFF President, Amaju Pinnick and the General Secretary, Dr,
Mohammed Sanusi, removed as witnesses from the original charge and
joined in the case as defendants before the court. The AGF counsel
appeared to brief the court on the position of the office of the AGF.
The presiding Judge, Justice Peter Affem, has however, given the
parties, including the Office of the AGF, till 16th December, 2019 to
decide on what next to be done and come back to inform the court.
Previously, the EFCC had filed a Charge before the court in 2018
against two former and a serving finance department staff of the NFF.
Subsequently, the EFCC turned around and applied to the court to add
the leadership of the NFF to this charge, as co-defendants.
The NFF opposed this application on many grounds including the fact
that there are several other cases that are currently ongoing against
these same persons. Counsel to NFF, Mr. Festus Ukpea, from Festus
Keyamo Chambers had argued that “you can’t be charging them before
several courts at the same time over practically the same issues. It
is better they are in one court so that they will know they are facing
one trial”.
He further stated that the office of the AGF agrees with the fact that
the cases and petitions should be harmonised and a common front
produced to determine the facts, rather than having the same persons
facing charges in separate courts over the the same allegations from
the same petitioners as this would constititute, clearly, an abuse of
court processes and the prosecutorial powers of the state.
The NFF and its leadership has consistently insisted its current
travails and allegations of corruption, targeted at only a selected
number of the leadership of the NFF, are false and simply a
politically motivated witch-hunt driven by its political opponents,
who having failed to assume leadership of the Federation through the
legitimate means of elections have now resorted to writing and
duplicating the same petitions across all investigative agencies
embelished with misleading, fabricated claims about outlandish sums of
money as having been misappropriated.
The office of the AGF is therefore expected to report to the court
with the conclusion of its independent review by the next hearing date
of the matter.
