The League Management Company has fined Kano Pillars N7.5m after their fans disrupted the Nigeria Professional Football League match against Akwa United at the Ahmadu Bello Stadium, Kaduna on Sunday.
In a statement by the LMC on Monday, Pillars were fined N5m for breaching COVID-19 protocols. They were also fined N2.5m “for encroachment by their supporters, which led to a discontinuation of the match.”
The Pillars game against Akwa was eventually completed Monday morning after fans stopped the game from continuing in the 87th minute on Sunday.
The LMC also imposed a three-point deduction on Pillars, which will be suspended for the duration of the remainder of the season, subject to good conduct by the club.
The suspended three-point deduction is however against the directive of the Nigeria Football Federation, which directed that an outright three points and three goals be deducted from home clubs who went ahead with matches with fans at the venue.
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“Violation of these directives would be severely dealt with. For sure, host clubs that open their gates to spectators will be judged to have failed in their responsibilities and would be declared to have lost the game in question by three goals and three points,” NFF said in a June 7 letter to the country’s league bodies.
The LMC in a separate letter to the NFF, asked that the performance of the match commissioner Bakura Abacha from Borno State be reviewed.
“The complaints against the match commissioner borders on his failure to follow COVID-19 protocol in line with NFF directives of not allowing spectators into the stadium.
“He also failed to take necessary steps to ensure that the match was not commenced or was discontinued upon noticing the crowd presence, which breaches the COVID-19 protocol,” the LMC said.
Speaking on the inability of the NFF and the LMC to issue appropriate sanctions to erring clubs, ex-international Segun Odegbami and former Chairman, Gombe FA, Shuaib Gara-Gombe, said the league managers had failed in their responsibilities.
“The people who are supposed to be running Nigerian football – the Nigerian Football Federation – have surrendered the mandate of running our league to the body that is not known in our football statutes. We don’t know the antecedents of the body itself, it’s not as if they had done it before. So, there is a big disconnect between the Nigeria Football Federation and the football they are running itself,” Odegbami told newsmen.
Gara-Gombe added, “I’ve always maintained that we don’t have a league, and because we don’t have a league, nothing exists in a vacuum. A league that has no control, there is no welfare, a league that there are no rules, a league that isn’t being sponsored; everything about that league is upside down. Everything that we are experiencing now is a reflection of the status of the league and the failure of the managers of the league to do the right thing.
“It is a case of dog eating dog, the League Management Company cannot sanction the players, the NFF cannot sanction the league, so what do you expect?”
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