Nigeria: Controversy Trails Eagles, Argentina Friendly

Daily Independent (Lagos)

Peter Edema

28 March 2011

The planned friendly match between Super Eagles and Argentina in June has been hit by controversy as football agents are threatening to report the Nigeria Football Association (NFA) to Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) if the NFA and Guinness fail to pay them their 25 per cent commission by Monday march 28, 2011.

The threat to either cancel the friendly or take legal action or report to FIFA was contained in a letter the FIFA licenced agent, Julius Owen Ighodaro sent to the NFA, Argentina Football Association and FIFA at the weekend.The Confederation of African Football (CAF) and the South America Football Confederation (CONMEBOL)was also copied.

He claimed in the letter that the contract to play the friendly was signed without his knowledge after three FIFA licenced Agents did all the consultancy works, warning the NFA and Guinness to pay up or face legal actions.

The letter sent to the NFA, FIFA reads

“We are informed that Nigeria and Argentina have signed a contract for an international friendly match on June 1st , 2011 in Nigeria.

“We call on both Argentina and Nigerian federations and the society World Eleven & GUINNESS company in Nigeria

to pay us promptly commissions of 25% of the total income of this friendly match, commission reserved for FIFA licensed match agents who worked on the draft international friendly match. We give you three days to do so until Monday, March 28, 2011.

“After this time, if we do not see anything from you, we reserve the right to make our complaints in any Nigeria court and FIFA for payment of our charges or the outright cancellation of this friendly match in case of refusal to pay our commission.

“Finally, I specify that three FIFA Matches Agents have worked jointly to match the setting development and implementation of this project and match.

According to Ighodaro, there are other documents to prove they did the job, noting, “the 25% commission you pay us will be divided equally to all three agents that worked on this project.

“For the good and the credibility of all, we are open to any negotiations going in towards payment of the commission claimed.

But the NFA dismissed as baseless claims by Ighodaro, with the NFA acting General Secretary, Musa Amadu saying on Monday that though NFA issued Ighodaro a letter of mandate to discuss the possibility of such a match, the agent had long come back to the NFA to say it was not possible.

“It is true we issued Ighodaro a letter of mandate to discuss with Argentina, after he came to us to claim that Argentina would be on a tour of Africa and that he could get them to play the Super Eagles. We therefore issued him the letter of mandate to see how this could be done. However, Ighodaro later came back to inform us that Argentina would no longer be willing to play Nigeria. At this point, we duly considered the matter dead and buried,” Amadu said in a statement signed by NFA Head of Media, Demola Olajire.

“Afterwards, our sponsors, Guinness came to us with valid papers that they had the consent of Argentina and we signed the papers.

“The mandate we signed with Ighodaro was a one-off thing, and at no time did we sign any contract with him concerning the match. We are therefore not contractually liable or committed to him or any of his collaborators.

“The NFA is now extremely careful about the kind of people we have relationship with concerning organization of matches.

“I must also add that this is the first time we are hearing about anyone by the name Pierre Herve Nouma Atangana on this issue. We had no idea that the Julius Owen Ighodaro works for another person. He gave us the impression he works for himself. So, we absolutely have no connection the said Pierre Herve Nouma Atangana in this matter, as the mandate was given to Mr. Ighodaro in his own name and company, and nobody else”, explained Amadu.

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