NIGERIA Football Federation (NFF) President, Amaju Pinnick, has revealed that the body is set to terminate all its sponsorship deals that are not working in its interest. The body will also renegotiate existing deals that are no longer tenable in the current economic environment, he added.

Pinnick, who revealed that most of the deals his board inherited from its predecessor will end this year, said the current economic climate has made it compulsory for the NFF to look at ways of bolstering its finances.
Pinnick confessed to a gathering of senior sports journalists recently that “generally, things are tough and as an organisation the NFF is doing a lot to see that it is not perpetually tied to the apron-string of the Federal Government.”

He said: “We are working to create avenues to bolster our resources and ensure that all the national teams and our development programmes do not suffer.
“Fortunately, most of the contracts we met on ground will expire this year and after reviewing their performances, we will sit down to plan what to do with them.”

Although he did not mention any particular deal, he revealed that most of the organisations to be affected by the new thinking are those that do not meet their obligations to the NFF as at when due.

Pinnick said the national Under-23 team would soon reconvene to begin preparations for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, just as the senior national team coaches will use the on-going African Nations Championship (CHAN) to build a good team for the upcoming Russia 2018 World Cup and the Gabon 2017 Nations Cup qualifiers.

Meanwhile, Pinnick has reiterated that the reconstitution of a number of the Federation’s standing committees and the judicial bodies were done only after extensive consultations with various football interest groups and stakeholders in the country.

While dissolving the 20 standing committees and two judicial bodies at the end of the NFF Annual General Assembly in Abuja on December 16, 2015, Pinnick stated that the dissolution was to re-invigorate the committees, make room for more inclusive arrangement and bring in more highly –qualified personalities.

The quality and capacity of membership of the six standing committees and the two judicial bodies released on Friday has validated Pinnick’s claims.

In an unprecedented move, the NFF has sought to carry along various interest groups, while also including some of the leading football personalities in the land.

The committees reconstituted are the Ethics and Fairplay, the Disciplinary Board, the Appeal Board, the Technical and Development Committee.
“The Committees will once more be the engine room of football administration, and that is why we are bringing the best hands from everywhere. We are consulting wide to ensure that every group is carried along because the football family is a united and indivisible one,” he said.

Still to be reconstituted are the Organizing, Finance, Legal, Players’ Status, Sports Medicine, Media and Publicity, Football, Futsal/Beach Soccer, Strategic Studies, Marketing, Sponsorship and Television Advisory, Women’s Football, Protocol and Ceremonial and Youth Football Committees.