Lamba Master Amaju Pinnick cannot be the NFF life president. He ruined our football
In saner climes, individuals who let down their countries retire quietly to a corner, regretting missed opportunities. But former NFF president Amaju Pinnick, who left our football worse than he met it, is an exception. With Arise News as a likely complicit partner, Pinnick regularly uses the platform to insult our intelligence with his phantom achievements. Olukayode Thomas reports.
Introduction
If there is a contest among members of the Sports Family to decide who takes the crown for Diarrhea of the mouth, Amaju Pinnick, a former president of the NFF, and former Sports Minister Solomon Dalung will be top contenders for the gold medal.
Super Eagles forward Victor Osimhen will be the favourite to win the bronze medal thanks to his rant against football legend Finidi George.
Unless Osimhen apologises to Finidi publicly, this loquacious lad will one day regret his outburst.
Like the Yoruba say, “Omode bu iroko, o boju weyin, ko mo pe ojo kan koni oluwere pa ni.” (A child insults the iroko tree and looks back in fear; little does he know that the tree spirit does not take vengeance on the same day.)
Back to the contest between Pinnick and Dalung for the gold medal. The former NFF president will definitely beat the former Sports Minister to the gold medal.
Take away Dalung’s gaffes, and Pinnick is a perfect example of one whose tongue runs before his wit.
A few days ago, Dalung, whose tenure as Sports Minister was an abysmal failure, described NSC officials as incompetent.
Not to be displaced by Dalung in the race for the gold medal, Pinnick came on Arise News a few days later to spew his usual lamba, insulting our intelligence by giving himself a title unknown to our football, the “life president of the NFF.”
Even if the title is known in our football, Pinnick, who took our football backwards, does not deserve such a prestigious title.
Basketmouth licks again on Arise News
In his usual cocky way, Pinnick said nobody, not even the NFF president, can stop him from playing an active role in the affairs of Nigerian football, insisting that he considers himself the "life president" of the federation.
Speaking on Arise News, Pinnick said, "So, because if everything goes the way they plan, if we work together, I work with them, and I don't have any regret. I can call the players; I talk to them. I don't wait. To me, I'm the life president of the NFF. So, I can also speak. I'm a very critical stakeholder.
"So, the NFF president cannot say, 'Pinnick, who are you?' No, he cannot tell me that. I will work for this country."
So let’s ask Pinnick who the alternate president of the NFF was, the one who called himself the life president while he was president of the NFF for eight years.
Who was the alternate chairman of the Delta Football Association who was calling himself the life chairman of the Delta Football Association when he was chairman?
Who was the alternate Executive Chairman of the Delta State Sports Commission when Pinnick was the Executive Chairman, who was calling himself the life Executive Chairman?
Pinnick, you had eight years to rewrite the history of our football and move it forward. You didn’t do it. You took it backwards. Your only achievement in office was using Nigeria and the NFF to advance your personal career in global football politics. You made the beautiful game ugly. Enough is enough.
Pinnick is being reminded of the Hausa proverb, ‘Sarki goma, Zamani goma’ (Ten kings, ten eras)
Mr. Bilateral and the 2030 World Cup qualification
A Yoruba proverb says, “Ọ̀lẹ́ ni ohun bá tún ilé-ẹ̀kún ilé rẹ ṣe, ó sì fura.” (When a thief says he will repair the door of your house, you must be suspicious.)
Still on Arise News, Pinnick dropped another lamba, claiming the Super Eagles will not only qualify for the 2030 World Cup but also make an impact at the tournament.
“I want to believe we are not just going to qualify for the next World Cup, that I can say, we are going to make a very prominent presence.”
Yet another lamba: “The next Nations Cup is ours, by God’s grace.”
I am shocked that the Arise News team did not remind Pinnick that he famously stated on the same Arise News in 2022 that "the bilateral relationship we have with Qatar" made it unthinkable that the Super Eagles would miss the tournament.
Despite this optimism, the Super Eagles were eliminated.
Now, if the man who promised the Qatar World Cup ticket failed to deliver, and who never took the Super Eagles to the final of any AFCON, is today promising us an AFCON trophy and a 2030 World Cup, it’s like a thief promising to repair the door of our house; we must be suspicious.
Pinnick spoke like a neophyte in football when he said, “Now the bedrock of any football federation is, one, your national team, your male national team. And I believe you know that we are getting it right. We have a coach, we have football, we have a team, and we have young, enterprising players.”
This is another lamba from Mr. Bilateral. The bedrock of football in any nation is its youth development programme, and that is why countries like Croatia, Ecuador, and others without competitive and lucrative leagues are producing some of the best players.
The strength of Italy, Germany, Spain, England, and other football nations is their leagues, not their national teams.
Pinnick also pointed to emerging talents being monitored by the NFF as evidence that the country’s football future remained promising.
“Then watch out for Zadok Yohanna. I personally did a review on him, the Yohanna boy who has gone to Brighton. That’s the future. The NFF is monitoring him; they’re talking to him. So the future looks very good.”
Haba, Pinnick, with this thinking, one is not surprised that you took our football backwards.
How can you say the future looks very bright when a country that has the potential to produce global stars like Brazil, France, Portugal, Spain, Germany, and other top countries has only Yohanna to be proud of?
How can Pinnick say our future is bright when we don’t have functional leagues and structured youth development programmes?
Apart from Ademola Lookman, whom we stole from England and who plays for Atletico Madrid, does Pinnick know that we don’t have any player at any top European football club?
Does he know that our best player today, Osimhen, plays in the Turkish league, a league for budding players and those planning retirement?
Does Pinnick know that if Osimhen scores 30 goals in the Turkish Super Lig, it is roughly equivalent to scoring 18 to 22 goals in Europe's top five leagues, according to the CIES Football Observatory?
When our best player is playing outside the top leagues in the world, and Pinnick says our future looks very good, then there is no debate; he is a neophyte in football.
Trophy drought under Pinnick and the 2026 World Cup
Pinnick recently expressed disbelief that Nigeria failed to take advantage of the expanded 2026 World Cup format, which allows up to 10 African nations to qualify for the tournament.
He insisted that the setback would not have occurred if he had remained in office for a third term.
While the current board deserves knocks and even dismissal for failure to qualify for the World Cup and other sins, they have done better than Pinnick’s board.
His predecessor, Aminu Maigari, won 13 trophies in four years as NFF president, including the AFCON.
In eight years, Pinnick won only three trophies. He failed to qualify the Super Eagles for AFCON in back-to-back editions.
Other teams that failed to qualify under Pinnick include the FIFA U-17 Men’s World Cup, the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup, the FIFA U-20 Men’s World Cup, and the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup. Both the Nigerian men’s and women’s teams also failed to qualify for the Olympic Games.
Before Pinnick, our league was highly rated in Africa and, at one point, ranked number one, but under him, we were ranked 14th.
We probably would not have qualified for this World Cup even if Pinnick had secured a fourth term.
Pinnick’s eight years of the locust and audio money
With the football development model now ubiquitous, and countries without our resources and talents, like Senegal, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Ecuador, and several others, taking advantage of these global developments to produce young and exciting stars who are not only making waves in top leagues but also doing well at major championships, Pinnick’s idea of football development was poaching Nigerian-born kids in Europe and elsewhere.
With his partner Tunde Adelakun, they abandoned budding talents at home to pursue ready-made stars abroad.
The question is: if those countries had abandoned youth development, where would they have poached talents from?
Most players with the talent to play for their country of birth snubbed the duo.
It was only players who, after representing their countries of birth at junior level but having little or no chance at senior level, switched allegiance to Nigeria.
Adelakun confessed that Bukayo Saka, Eberechi Eze, Carney Chukwuemeka, Michael Olise, and others snubbed them.
Apart from killing youth development, Warri Wolves, his home team, were relegated under Pinnick's watch.
The FIFA Goal Project in Ugborodo, his native Delta State, which was fully funded by a FIFA grant, is still an audio project.
Besides the audio Goal Project, under Pinnick, it was also the era of “audio money.”
We read daily about multi-million-naira sponsorship deals between the NFF and corporate giants, yet the federation goes to the government for money every day.
Coaches and players of the national teams complained about unpaid salaries and allowances, often leading to protests and boycotts.
The same fate befell winners of other NFF-organised competitions.
Arise News needs to start fact-checking Pinnick
But why has Arise News continued to surrender its platform to Pinnick to spew lamba?
Journalism is about subjecting facts to scrutiny until they confess. Why has the Arise News anchor found it difficult to subject Pinnick's claims to scrutiny?
If a man used your medium to tell the world that because of the bilateral agreement between Nigeria and Qatar, the Super Eagles would be at the 2022 World Cup and it never happened, and on the same station he is saying Nigeria will not only qualify for the 2030 FIFA World Cup but win an AFCON title before the tournament, can’t Arise News ask him what happened to the promise he made that never materialised?
If Pinnick calls himself the life president of the NFF on national television, are they not supposed to ask what he means by that and whether such a title exists in the NFF constitution?
If the Arise News anchors are too busy to follow up on Pinnick’s claims that he is the best thing that has happened to our football since sliced bread, what about the Arise News Sports Desk?
What stops the Director of News from telling the Sports Editor and his team to go to town with a camera and carry out an independent assessment of Pinnick's tenure by speaking to stakeholders in the football industry instead of swallowing his self-assessment as gospel truth?
Arise News surrendering its platform to Pinnick for his regular lamba is not responsible journalism.
As for the lamba master Pinnick, the majority of stakeholders in football refer to your tenure as NFF president as the years of the locust, and no amount of propaganda or lamba on Arise News can change it. It will only earn you more gold medals as a man who speaks before engaging his wits.
