The Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, on Monday banned for life players and officials of four Nigerian amateur clubs involved in two promotional play-off games into the Nigeria Nationwide League that produced scandalous 79-0 and 67-0 score lines.
The four clubs, Plateau United Feeders, Akurba FC, Babayaro FC and Police Machine FC, have also been banned from the game for 10 years.
Addressing the journalists in the board room of the NFF secretariat in Abuja, the first vice-president of the NFF board who also doubles as the chairman of the organising and disciplinary committee, MikeUmeh, said after due deliberation that followed the debriefing of all the actors involved in the saga, the only option was to seriously sanction the culprits because of the disrepute they had brought the game to.
“It will be recalled that the two fixtures have given the football world a record goal of 146 with Plateau Feeders accounting for 79 of the goals while Police Machine scored 67 goals against BabayaroFC of Gombe.” Umeh said.
Lamenting the global embarrassment the teams have caused theNFF, Umeh stated that the investigating committee was not able to confirm any exchange of money or material inducement, but determined that the winners were desperate to win and losers were desperate to lose.
One of the board members of the Nigeria Nationwide League found wanting in the discharge of his responsibilities, Tanko Bawa Maiyaki, has not been sanctioned but was referred to the league’s board for appropriate action.
A statement by the head of national competition of the football federation, Sanusi Mohammed, stated that photographs of the culprits have been forwarded to all relevant security agencies to forestall further scam.
“… as we are talking to you people now, we are already sending I mean scanning their pictures to the Inspector General of Police, theSSS, CAF and FIFA, we know they could go ahead to change names and other particulars but on our part we intend to tie up all loose ends with this act,” Mohammed said.