By Harrison Jalla President (NANF)

In 2014 after he emerged, surprisingly, as the president, Nigeria Football Federation, Amaju Pinnick promised to revamp the Nigeria football federation.

By the time he went in for his second term bid in 2018 after the Russia World Cup, Pinnick sang another tune. This time around, he promised to reconcile perceived enemies and cement every broken relationship in the federation.

But five years in the saddle, it appears that the Delta State born administrator has more irons in the fire to grind.

The President, National Association of Nigeria Footballers, NANF, Harrison Jalla in this article questions the rebuilding mantra Pinnick promised Nigeria football stakeholders.

He emerged as the newly elected President from the controversial Warri NFF elections in 2014 with so much zest with the mantra of sustainable football culture and capacity building for Nigeria football.

Nigeria Football Stakeholders and indeed Nigerians where swept away with the brilliance with which he articulated his vision for Nigeria football. 

But Five years down the line into the second term of his administration, Amaju Pinnick has left a trail and legacy of perhaps the most financially reckless NFF President since inception of organised football in 1945 in this country.                               

With the 2014 FIFA World Cup $8.6m grant frittered away and the dead silence over the fate of the 2018 Russia FIFA World Cup money which the NANF will soon seek an order of Mandamus for the Central Bank of Nigeria to make full disclosure, all is not well with Nigeria football.   

Countless under the table deals with sponsors part of which was purportedly used for a hurriedly packaged capacity building programme in London early in the Pinnick Administration.                   

To fleecing of state governors, captains of industries, business moguls, for both hosting of Super Eagles matches and the CAF elections project, these where all done by Pinnick as a one-man-riot Squad.              

Pinnick disingenuously used the NFF as a platform to enrich and empower himself and immediately launched a vaulting ambition of becoming the first Nigerian CAF President by all means and a force to be reckoned with in FIFA and global football.

It was while chasing these ambitions like a wild wind that Pinnick lost focus at home and abandoned his mantra of a Sustainable Football Culture and Capacity Building.                              

Pinnick’s actions and inactions have set Nigeria football several decades back.