Nigerian FA President Amaju Pinnick has apologized after the Super Eagles forfeited their 2018 World Cup qualifier against Algeria.<\/p>\n
Nigeria were given a 3-0 walkover loss by FIFA on Tuesday for fielding an ineligible player in the game against Algeria in November which ended in a 1-1 draw.<\/p>\n
Nigeria midfielder Shehu Abdullahi was to serve an automatic one match ban in the game against the Algerians after he picked up two yellow cards in the series, but ended up featuring in the said game.<\/p>\n
The development, however, does not affect the Super Eagles\u2019 qualification to the World Cup, but Amaju Pinnick took to Twitter on Wednesday to render an apology to the fans and accepted full responsibility for what he described as an oversight.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll start by tendering my wholehearted apology to Nigeria and Nigerians for the Shehu Abdullahi error. It is unforgivable and could have undone months of hard work. As head of the Federation, I take responsibility for this. It happened on my watch.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile accepting the Federation\u2019s fault here, let me quickly explain how this went by unnoticed. It doesn\u2019t change the fact that we didn\u2019t keep our eyes on the ball and will help us in our planned restructuring of the Technical & Competitions Department.<\/p>\n
\u201cShehu Abdullahi got his first yellow card in our very first preliminary match against Swaziland away. When the draws for the Group Stages were made, the Technical staff made a grave error; assumption. They assumed the cards gotten prior would not count.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be fair to them, throughout the qualifying series, official match documents didn\u2019t even show that Shehu Abdullahi was on a yellow card. For instance, when we played Cameroon, Mikel, Moses and Balogun were put on notice that they had yellow cards.<\/p>\n
\u201cTeam meetings were even held about how to handle their cards so they wouldn\u2019t miss crucial games. Shehu Abdullahi was never in the mix. Shehu then recieved a yellow against Zambia in our penultimate game, two years after the Swaziland match.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnother grave mistake then occurred. Fifa sent an email to the technical officer in charge, that Shehu Abdullahi was suspended for the Algeria match. In a twist of fate, that officer was in hospital, with a severe heart condition, battling for his life.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest knock to our system is the fact that his official correspondences should have been forwarded to more than one person. It wasn\u2019t. We went into our last match not knowing about Fifa\u2019s notice. Not acceptable, I agree, but these are the facts of the matter.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the match day, we were unaware, the match officials were unaware and our opponents were unaware. It was a horrendous error and we at the Federation are truly apologetic. We thank God it did not undue years of hard work\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
It was a lack of due diligence in and by one of our departments and we are ensuring that errors like these never happen again. On behalf of all of us at the @thenff; I apologise, Nigeria. Our focus remains. We will soar higher.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nigeria will face Argentina , Croatia and Iceland in Group D of the 2-18 World Cup with Argentina, Croatia and Iceland.<\/p>\n
–
\nBy: citi Sports\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nigerian FA President Amaju Pinnick has apologized after the Super Eagles forfeited their 2018 World Cup qualifier against Algeria. Nigeria were given a 3-0 walkover loss by FIFA on Tuesday for fielding an ineligible player in the game against Algeria in November which ended in a 1-1 draw. Nigeria midfielder Shehu Abdullahi was to serve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[142],"tags":[337,15420],"yoast_head":"\n