The Nigeria Football Federation
(NFF) has dismissed the statement made by former Youth and Sports Minister,
Solomon Dalung, at the weekend that the Federation omitted the budget for the
2019 Africa Cup of Nations from its 2019 programmes sent to the Ministry.
“There is no truth to the claim
that the NFF omitted the AFCON from its budget.
“The truth is that major
competitions are never part of the regular budgets since, in most cases,
qualification campaigns are still on course while budgets are being prepared
for the following year. Thus, they are always sourced from intervention funds.
“We qualified for the 2019 AFCON
in November 2018, after the 1-1 draw with South Africa in Johannesburg. That
was too late to include in the budget for 2019, which we had submitted around
September/October 2018. So, we knew the grace would be for the AFCON fund to be
sourced from special intervention, and not from the proposal that had been
submitted earlier as regular program.
“For instance, the 2018 FIFA
World Cup budget was also sourced from intervention fund. We qualified for that
competition in October 2017 and we could not have included it in the regular
program for the year 2018,” NFF Executive Committee member and Chairman of the
Media and Publicity Committee, Hon. (Dr) Suleiman Yahaya-Kwande told thenff
website.
Kwande, who actually defended the
NFF budget for the year 2019 at the Ministry of Budget and National Planning,
said that the Federation at this time is only interested in ensuring that the
National Teams (male and female) excel at their respective tournaments in which
they are representing Nigeria.
According to him, NFF would
ordinarily not respond to Dalung’s statements, but noted that it is important
to put records straight to avoid misleading the public.
“For the regular annual budgets,
we put together our budget for every competition and send to the Federal
Ministry of Youth and Sports, which then puts a covering note and recommends to
the Presidency, from where the document heads to the Finance Ministry and then
onwards to the Budget Office.
“Since this NFF administration
came into office, as was the case for some time before it, the Federation usually
received what is called an ‘envelope’. So, the only way to prosecute major
competitions is to depend on the grace of intervention funds.
“Few weeks after we qualified for
the AFCON 2019, we sent a budget to the Ministry. We sent this same budget about
three times as we were always being told to re-submit.
“Mr. Dalung was Minister of
Sports for three-and-half years and not once did the NFF bypass the Ministry to
submit a budget to the Presidency or the Finance Ministry. Facts are sacred,”
he added.
Kwande also denied that the NFF
wrote any story to curry sympathy as alleged by Dalung.
“We have no time for those kind
of spins. Another deliberate misleading statement by the former Minister was
the allegation that the NFF leadership has been saying that it can do without
government funding. We have never said so; we have only ever stated that the
NFF has attained about 60 per cent self-funding from the analysis of our 2017
audited accounts that we published, and that we are determined to drive towards
total self-funding which would be a delight to the Government, as it will free
resources for other critical sectors.
“It is however interesting that
Mr. Dalung now considers the NFF as a self–accounting parastatal, when several
times during his tenure he refused to accept such.
“We are not sure what the
intentions of Mr. Dalung are regarding the so-called ‘feelers’ he said he is
having about possible unrest in the Super Eagles’ camp. There is nothing of
such; it is statements such as those being made by Dalung at such inauspicious
times that, but for the absolute discipline and concentration of the Super
Eagles, is capable of truncating harmony in the camp.
“The players are focused on the
noble assignment of doing Nigeria proud and told representatives of the
Nigerian ambassador to Egypt (the representative of His Excellency, President
Muhammadu Buhari in that country) as much when they visited the camp some days
ago.
“The ‘feelers’ we are getting are
all positive, and we are confident the team will do the country proud at the end
of the day,” he said.
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