Business mogul and President of Real Sapphire Football Club, Frank Peters, has raised his voice through the Sports Director of his club, Francis Opete that the frequent intimidation from staffers of the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, be restricted completely.
Francis Ogete lamented that the negative influence, non-challant attitude and self aggrandizement of some personnel in the NFF have contributed to the fall and death of academies in Nigeria.
Five players from Real Sapphire Football Club were entangled in the transfer saga and the NFF has turned blind eyes to the plight of the club. The players are Kazeem Balemo, Moses Odo, Ogenetega Laba, Ajibade Abiola and Odo Joshua.
Ogete questioned “How can a registered academy in Nigeria has a problem with the Egyptian FA and the NFF turns its eyes off? We are talking about transfers that involved five players, imagine how much we used to finance these players out of Nigeria only for us to hear that some clubs in Egypt through a scout hijacked them?
“How can they play for clubs internationally if they are registered with the NFF under our club, who issued International Transfer Certificates (ICT) for them.
“We are not going to bow to NFF, we will start fishing out the people involved in this dirty deal, we have gone to FIFA already and we are calling on every Nigerian interested in football to call the NFF to order.
“We will ensure that this issue gets resolved and we want to clearly send a message to Amaju Pinnick, the president of NFF to call his men to order.
“Let us inform Nigerians that the academy has invested over N20m on these five players over the years, we will ensure that the investment will count.
“We presently have confirmed information that two of them are playing in leagues in Egypt while another one is playing in Saudi Arabia”.
The big question is who cleared the players at the NFF?