Shehugate: FIFA alerted Pinnick, 2 others ―Report

The email from world football governing body FIFA clearly stating the ineligibility of Shehu Abdullahi was communicated formally to three principal officers of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) – President Amaju Pinnick, secretary general Mohammed Sanusi and director of competitions, Bola Oyeyode, SCORENigeria can authoritatively report.

Also, this warning was sent to the two official NFF email addresses as well as copied to the Confederation of African Football (CAF).

The email was dated Monday, October 9, 2017, and signed by the secretary of the disciplinary committee of FIFA.

This was a clear one month to the match against Algeria in Constantine.

Investigations further revealed that FIFA subsequently sent another email on November 13 querying the use of Shehu Abdullahi in that game.

The world football governing body gave NFF a deadline of November 21 to respond to this query.

We gathered that the response was lame and unacceptable and so the subsequent sanctions.

Meanwhile, Sanusi has admitted that he was aware that Shehu was ineligible for the game in Constantine and passed on the information to the relevant department but it was not acted upon by the officer in charge.

“Information that is sent usually is sent to the office of the General Secretary and the relevant departments are being copied for them to know what is happening,” Sanusi said.

“We received that communication from FIFA long ago and we sent it to the relevant department for them to take note of.

“You will agree with me that the office of General Secretary is like a clearing house, when information is sent you now send it to the relevant department for them to make use of and if there is any progress they now revert to the office of General Secretary.

“That is why we have departments that are in charge of different segments. We have Technical, Competitions, we have Accounts.

“As I say, we do not want to trade blames here, we do not want to say this is the one that is at fault. A committee has been formed and we wait for the committee to finish their job.”

Nigeria were punished by FIFA for fielding Abdullahi Shehu, who was suspended, but this does not change anything as the Super Eagles had already qualified for the World Cup before the inconsequential match.

The Algerians were awarded a 3-0 win and Nigeria docked one point for their negligence.