Stakeholders want NFF to intervene in Ebonyi FA polls crisis

FOOTBALL stakeholders in Ebonyi State at the weekend called on the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) to intervene and save the game in the state following the polls crisis that has seen the emergence of two boards of the state’s Football Association.

  The Guardian gathered that two different FA polls were conducted at different venues last week, with one of such elections conducted by the incumbent chairman, Obinna Ogba, at the Salt Lake Hotel. The other faction, led by former NEPA FC player, Nwankwo Pius, held its own polls at the Abakiliki Township Stadium. Both polls produced two separate boards with Ogba emerging as a factional chairman, while Nwankwo was elected chairman at the Abakiliki Township Stadium with Peter Agba as his deputy.

  In a petition filed at the NFF Secretariat, the Pius Nwankwo-led faction urged the Federation to cancel the election that returned Ogba as chairman, describing it as a charade, which featured non-delegates as voters.

  Nwankwo, who runs the Pin I Sports Academy in Abalkiliki, in the petition dated March 2, 2015 and made available to The Guardian, said the polls that returned Ogba as Ebonyi FA chairman was just a gathering of Ogba’s friends and associates of the state’s FA secretary, Desmond Onu.

  The petition states in part: “We seek the NFF’s intervention to save football in Ebonyi State. For 17 Years there has never been any form of Congress in the FA. Stakeholders were completely barred from entering the Salt Lake Hotel venue of their polls. Obinna Ogba owns that hotel. All the known football stakeholders in Ebonyi were at the Abakiliki Township Stadium where the real election was held and we were duly elected. Even all attempts we made to reach the NFF monitor were frustrated because he was quarantined inside the Salt Lake Hotel were Obinna Ogba was in full control.”