Fifa has suspended the Benin Football Federation (FBF) from global football after a court ruling in the country blocked upcoming elections.<\/p>\n
A statement from football’s world governing body said: “The Benin Football Association (FBF) was suspended with immediate effect due to a recent injunction by a local judicial court which impeded the holding of the due election.”<\/p>\n
It means Benin is set to miss June’s 2017 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier against Equatorial Guinea.<\/p>\n
The decision was made at the inaugural Fifa Council meeting, which is being held in Mexico.<\/p>\n
A court ruling in Benin on 4th May prevented the FBF from holding presidential elections and the suspension will be lifted only once a new Executive Committee has been installed.<\/p>\n
Benin is currently second in Group C, two points behind group leaders Mali.<\/p>\n
The Squirrels are due to host Equatorial Guinea on the weekend of 3-5 June and then travel to face Mali in September.<\/p>\n
Only the group winners are guaranteed a place at the 2017 finals in Gabon.<\/p>\n
The Fifa Council meeting also ratified a recent decision of the bureau of the Council to appoint a normalisation committee to run the daily affairs of the Guinea Football Federation.
\n–
\nBy: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fifa has suspended the Benin Football Federation (FBF) from global football after a court ruling in the country blocked upcoming elections. A statement from football’s world governing body said: “The Benin Football Association (FBF) was suspended with immediate effect due to a recent injunction by a local judicial court which impeded the holding of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[142,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-213451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=213451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=213451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=213451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=213451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}