Two years after his controversial removal from office by the executive committee of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), for alleged financial misappropriation, Alhaji Sani Lulu Abdullahi, erstwhile president of the NFF, has opened up on the corruption allegation levelled against him.
Addressing newsmen yesterday in Abuja, the immediate past NFF boss disclosed that at the time he was forced out of office, he left a total of N2.8 billion in both NFF local accounts and the account with world soccer governing body (FIFA) and challenged anybody with contrary position to come out with facts. He said the money includes the $8m FIFA 2010 World Cup participation fees and the $5.5m FIFA sponsorship funds for the 2009 U-17 World Cup held in Nigeria, stressing that people in authority are only waging campaign of calumny against him to cast a slur on his person and reputation.
“I have at various occasions clarified my four-year stewardship as president of the NFF from August 2006 to July 2010. However, while we await the court’s verdict, I will be doing a great disservice to Nigerians who gave me their electoral mandate if I don’t respond to these malicious accusations being levelled against me. Indeed, as at the time we were forced out of office, NFF had a total of N2.8b in either its local accounts or with the FIFA account. Included in this amount is the $8m FIFA 2010 World Cup participation fees and the $5.5m FIFA sponsorship funds for the 2009 U-17 World Cup in Nigeria,” Lulu revealed.
Speaking further, the former director of sports, FCT, said Nigeria earned a total of $9m from FIFA for qualifying for the 2010 World Cup held in South Africa and out of it, $1m was advanced for preparation for the tournament while the remaining balance of $8m was not remitted to the NFF account before his impeachment from office following the astonished letter written to the soccer governing body by the former minister of sports, Ibrahim Isa Bio which stopped his board from accessing the fund.
He said out of the widely speculated N1.25b approved and released by the federal government for Nigeria’s 2010 World Cup participation, only N900m was remitted to NFF’s account by the National Sports Commission (NSC), while the remaining balance of N350m was withheld in the NSC. He added that at the time of his impeachment with two other erstwhile officials of the NFF, the sum of N326m and $540, 000 were left in the various accounts of the NFF as residues from the N900m released to them by the NSC from the federal government.
On the $5.5m sponsorship fund for the 2009 FIFA U-17 World Cup tagged ‘Nigeria 2009’, he said the money remitted by FIFA through NFF to the Nigeria 2009 Local Organising Committee (LOC) and lodged in the LOC account with First Bank, Abuja with no amount withdrawn from it during his tenure as NFF president and chairman LOC.
The former NFF helmsman also denied bribing 36 states FA chairmen as inducement for his re-election bid. “I am not aware of any bribe to any group or individual. I am however, aware that FIFA has an annual grant of $250, 000 to associations to facilitate national development programmes. My executive committee approved that annual total remittance of N18.5m of N500, 000 to each state and the FCT for grassroots developmental programmes. “I am not speculating. What I stated here are facts and the statistics are there for anybody to verify. Anyone with objection should come out with relevant facts instead of misleading the public with wrong information,” he said.