Jonathan didn’t impose Keshi on NFF —PINNICK

The Punch - Nigeria

President of the Nigeria Football Federation, Amaju Pinnick, admits he has not found life easy as head of the country’s football body.In this interview with PIUS AYINOR, he talks on his challenges and his plans to move the NFF forward
Howhas it been running the federation?
It has been a very tough call because football is a kind of religion in the country. It is the only thing that unites people. It is the number one, two and three sport in Nigeria. After football, there is hardly any other sport that attracts the attention football creates. We have a population of close to 170 million people eager to get only positive results. Because of this, it has been very challenging. Some weeks back, I was accosted at Hilton by a Nigerian that was very furious. He held me and requested that I explain to him certain things. I thought it was a joke until he asked me to sit down and he demanded with rage to know a lot of things. Although he later apologised, you could see the kind of enthusiasm that is resident in Nigerians because of football. Since I was elected, it’s been one battle or the other. I call them inter and intra class battles – battles between the federation and others and battles within the federation. I am in the federation to drive a leadership that will effect the change that we have been craving for in Nigerian football. The potential we have in Nigerian football is beyond human comprehension. So, you understand the constraints we have. You have to create an environment for a sustainable football culture. My direction is not basically to be winning all the time. If we win, good, we will work towards winning but let’s build that culture first where everyone can go to the stadium and watch matches.
Talking about stadiums, many are worried when they see the Nigerian League on TV with the stadiums empty. Is this not a source of worry for you?
That is exactly what I am talking about when I talk of a football culture. For every problem, there is a solution. You must design and desire a solution for you to have results. The solution is to take into cognisance what used to obtain in the past when Mighty Jets, Abiola Babes, Leventis United, New Nigerian Bank, Bendel United, Stationary Stores, Shooting Stars and others were playing. There was no television coverage then but now there are a lot of live matches and telecast of matches. What we need to do is to strengthen the League Management Company and have an interface. The next thing after that is the implementation of the plan. For instance, if Glo is the sponsor, there is nothing stopping them from bringing their ambassadors to the major matches with the intent to attract fans to the stadiums. This could be included in the sponsorship. When people see these stars, such as P-Square, during the half time of a big match, they will be attracted to watch the matches. Also, there is the need not to place same matches time they are playing matches of major European leagues, especially the English Premier League. You can have Friday night football, Monday night football, Saturday morning, among others.
Sponsors like Glo and MTN have come into the league but it seems the NFF has not been transparent enough to decide on a good sponsor for the league. There seem to be a kind of partiality in the selection of these sponsors. What do you think is happening?
I believe in the principle of ‘together we stand, the more prosperous we can be.’ Nigeria has an arena where everybody can participate and have the same value. But like you said, there have been many contracts that have been signed before we came on board – some till 2017, some till 2018 but we have met with the marketing department and the former General Secretary of the federation to see how we can unbuckle the written contracts we met. We will make them understand that we can all benefit from it. No contract is sacrosanct especially when you breach it by a minute and some of these companies have breached these contracts with the federation many times. But because they have contributed immensely to the development of football in the country, we must give them kudos. We will also let them understand that we can accommodate everybody. We can design and develop products for the teams. For instance, the breweries, the telecommunication companies, the oil companies, among others, can support the dream of the federation because they all have what they can contribute to the creation and development of a suitable football culture in Nigeria.
Lastly on Glo, I know that before you came on board, there were murmurs that they don’t pay but want to control the federation. Are they still owing and how much precisely?
Every year, Glo is supposed to pay the federation N360m according to the contract signed. When we came on board in September, they had not paid. I met with our marketer, Pamodzi, to write to them and instead of paying in one chunk, they paid half. That was around December. I was very pained with that and we had a meeting where we resolved certain things and I told them that we cannot continue like this. As I said earlier, there is no contract that is sacrosanct and as such it is open to review because they are supposed to pay it as a one off thing. Anything outside that means that the contract is breached.
Many people see football as a game that can be independent and finance itself but we keep hearing that NFF lacks money…
Football is business. When I left Delta State I left money in the accounts but you need to have a lot of integrity to attract Nigerian companies. They want to spend money on football because they know if they spend money on it, you have an environment that is more free from crime. They want their businesses to thrive and they want to invest in football. But you have to have the image and character to drive that and attract them. The truth is that we are projecting that in the next two years, we want to raise $30m. But we inherited a lot of debts which when put together at the current exchange rate, should be over N4bn. It is an accumulated debt which had spanned over time and over many administrations. The (Aminu) Maigari-led regime did well in terms of the number of trophies won and that means they did lots of preparations. For instance, the U-23 playing against Zambia cost about N100m for the two legs. The Falcons versus Mali over one leg cost over N50m and the U-20 boys at the AYC in Senegal cost around $680, 000. Not for the camping but for the tournament alone. All these are there for anyone to see and if one looks at it, they are capital intensive ventures and we have 12 national teams. So everybody should understand our constraints. So when they say there is no money, it is true that there is no money. How much do the sponsors give? Even if Glo gives you N350m, that is just for one weekend’s game. When I came, we were having a kind of honorarium from the government which is about N108m monthly. What I did was to get the finance committee to be in Abuja and go through the federation’s indebtedness again and establish the ones that are really true through the vouchers available and we started paying our creditors. Once this money comes, we pay some of them so it is a very difficult call to make. It is not easy. I don’t want to throw in the towel one day and say that I am no longer interested. Even though I love football and want to provide that leadership that will change the fortunes of the game in Nigeria, I also have a family that is so dear to me. I also have a business that isn’t doing badly by God’s grace.
Let’s talk about the national team coach, Stephen Keshi. Initially, you were not satisfied with his performance after the World Cup and you sacked him. But Keshi returned. Is it true that the President asked him to come back?
Let me say it emphatically, the President did not ask Keshi to come back. What happened was that the Technical Director felt that the time was too short and it would be counter-productive to leave him at that point. Coincidentally, that was the time the President called me and Chris Giwa, so people just felt it was the President who asked Keshi to return. It was merely a speculation. The President did not say that. So when he (Keshi) came back, of course the contract said, ‘if you don’t qualify, we can part ways with you.’ It was not stated that he must go. Now, I actually said that I can’t jump into a contract if I don’t have the funds to pay a coach. So let’s see if we can get a sponsor who can help us get a coach. His salary will be domiciled in our account and every month, we do a direct debit to his account to avoid the issue of them going to the press to say they have not been paid. It was not only for him but for all the national teams’ coaches. That is exactly the direction we want to go. But it took us three months to prepare the contract because it went through the various committees and I am happy we got the contract, which he (Keshi) accepted. And he said it is not a slave contract like he previously said. We should also understand that Keshi is one of the only two Africans to have won the AFCON as a player and a coach and he was able to discover lots of local talents. He also qualified Togo for their first World Cup. Now we can’t say that he is a dunce, he has the brains but he might need to build his capacity. One of my discussions with Arsene Wenger in London recently was that we want to bring our national teams coaches to have some kind of internship and he agreed and he even gave me a date: July 2; during the pre-season. The contract states that he (Keshi) has to work with the Technical Director, Shaibu Amodu, he has to work with the Technical Committee as well as the Technical Study Group. Which means selection process will go through all these areas.
Why did Musa Amadu resign as Secretary General of the NFF? Is it true that he wanted to pay a backlog of salaries to coaches and you refused?
That is untrue. When we received the $8.4m FIFA money, we had some indebtedness of about $10m, and also N2bn, which puts the total to around N4bn. Like I said, these debts are over time. Even there was one about Celestine Babayaro’s allowance that was not paid to him. I got the finance committee to sit together with me and we looked at all these. We also owe the National Sports Commission about N700m, we owe hotels. I can’t remember the figure but it is between N300m and N500m. All these are capital intensive. The government also gave us $3.6m. I knew a lot had happened before I joined the federation. I knew that the players had protested saying that the federation had collected money from FIFA and didn’t want to give them the money. That was when the President said the $3.6m should be given to them but when the FIFA money comes, it would be returned. That was what I was told. So when we came on board, the first thing I said was that the government money had to be refunded. I told both the General Secretary and the Finance Committee and they agreed that it should be refunded out of the FIFA money. I kept asking him if he had returned the money to the government, he said yes, that he was in the process of returning it. I was very happy about it thinking that the money had truly gone. I called the Central Bank of Nigeria Governor to ask for the receipt of the funds, but he said it hadn’t been paid. I was hugely embarrassed because I had boasted to the Minister of Sports, who in turn had told the President that the NFF had paid back the money they received. I now asked the General Secretary and he told me that some members were sceptical about the return of the money and I asked him to tell me the member and I will talk to the person because it was an agreement we reached at a meeting. I told him that we need this money to be paid back to the government. Then I called my board members and explained the situation to them highlighting the importance. I am the interface between the federation and these people and I must take responsibility. They suggested that we should write to the government and suggest that the money should be used for something else since we have a lot of issues. I agreed. I told them that we will write to the government but the money should be kept intact and that when it is ready we should send it back if they don’t agree with us. The letter explained our programmes and our funds for the programmes and also the challenges we have with funds. We also appealed for some help from the intervention funds for our trips to the three World Cups we are attending in 2015 and the many qualifiers we have. After the appeals I made to the Director General of the NSC and the minister, the House of Representatives Committee on Sports called us and after our explanation, we were told that the money was part of an intervention fund that had been captured in the budget and there was no need for it to be refunded. I was now caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Since I am from the executive arm of the federation; I have to take orders from them. I then appealed to them to allow us wait for the response to the letter to the President. Musa is an excellent guy, very competent. He is somebody anybody will wish to work with but for me to make an impact in the federation; I need to have an absolute control of the federation. If I give you a directive and you don’t follow it, it is not the general secretary that will be called, he is only the head of the secretariat, it is the president that will be called and questioned. I just believe that there might be fracas between us in future despite the fact that we are friends. Apart from being brilliant and clever, there is one element that is needed to support my dream of taking the federation to the next level that people are craving for, it is loyalty. I am not saying that Musa wasn’t loyal, but a simple directive should be followed even if you are going to do it and come back to me to say that I have done it but I feel we can do it another way. It was my body language that he saw, which made him resign his appointment.
Was the money tampered with along the line or what happened?
The money is intact.
So, why did you say Musa didn’t carry out your directive?
He didn’t carry out my directives because the money is still in the federation’s account. If he had carried it out, the money would have left the NFF account. I also believe that if I am your boss, you can sit me down and talk to me. I don’t want to discuss this because I want to respect his decision to resign. Musa will be a success anywhere because he knows what to do but I look beyond his skills.
With the way people look at the Eagles, Nigerians cannot vouch that they will qualify for the next AFCON…
Trust me we will. By the grace of God the Eagles will.
Do you think Keshi still has a lot to offer the Eagles?
People should support Keshi to succeed. I personally will bring Keshi to all the media houses. We need to support him again. On his current stint with the Eagles, Keshi and I will do a lot of image repair and he really needs our support to succeed because he is our brother.