Nigerian footballer, Oniya collapses, dies in Malaysia

NIGERIAN defender David Faramola Oniya collapsed on the pitch and died after playing just a few minutes of a local friendly in Malaysia on Saturday, reports said.

Oniya, 30, went down about three minutes into the game for T-Team and was pronounced dead at hospital around half-an-hour later, the club`s chief executive told The Star newspaper.

CEO Syahrizan Mohd Zain said Oniya, who was in his first season with second-tier T-Team, had barely touched the ball in the friendly with Super League side Kelantan in Kota Bharu.

“There was no hard running and it was a slow tempo match. It`s only a friendly game,” Syahrizan was quoted as saying.

“The match was called off in the 60th minute when we received a call from the hospital that Oniya had died.”

Deaths on the pitch, often from heart failure, are not unheard of and Belgium lost two players in two weeks in late April and May.

The most prominent case was Cameroon midfielder Marc-Vivien Foe, who collapsed and died while playing a Confederations Cup semi-final against Colombia in Lyon in 2003.

Nigerian footballer, Oniya collapses, dies in Malaysia

NFF Fire: Security Operatives question Key Players

True to their word, Nigeria’s security operatives have begun interrogating key officials of the body that controls Nigeria’s football affairs in order to unravel the mystery behind the fire that engulfed the Abuja headquarters of the Nigerian Football Federation early last Wednesday. The fire inflicted significant damage on the building popularly called the Glass House.

Yesterday, officials of the State Security Service (SSS) questioned Mike Umeh, one of the principal actors in recent controversies involving the members of the NFF. Mr. Umeh’s extensive questioning took place at the Yellow House, the headquarters of the SSS in Abuja.

An SSS official said the agency was interested in having Mr. Umeh clarify certain statements he made regarding the fire. The NFF official had described the fire as “strange” and “a sabotage,” adding that it was designed to cover the corruption at the federation. He had also accused top NFF officials of complicity in the fire, increasingly being treated as a case of arson, according to a source involved in the investigation.

Another SSS official refused to divulge the specific information the agency’s investigators got from Mr. Umeh, who served for a short time as acting president after President Goodluck Jonathan’s removal of the incumbent president, Aminu Maigari. Mr. Maigari was reinstated following threats by FIFA, the global regulator of football, to suspend Nigeria from the international body.

“We’re going to be talking to as many people as possible in order to get to the root of the fire at Glass House,” the SSS source said. He added: “The fact that we invited Chief Umeh to answer questions does not mean that we consider him a suspect. We are engaged in fact-finding at this stage.”

One of our sources revealed that SSS agents planned to invite Mr. Maigari to field questions today. “We are aiming to cover every ground in the investigations that will determine if Wednesday’s fire was indeed arson,” said the source.

Like Mr. Umeh, many Nigerians suspect that some NFF insiders must have set the fire with the motive of destroying documents that might reveal graft and other acts of corruption in the federation.

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NFF Fire: Security Operatives question Key Players

Maigari’s NFF board denies allegations of Corruption

The Aminu Maigari-led Executive Board of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has said that all the allegations leveled against it are false, unfounded and a planned plot to destroy all the remarkable successes it recorded in the past four years by forces opposed to the leadership of the football house.

A prominent member of the NFF Executive Board who pleaded anonymity has risen in strong defense of the federation in the face of an avalanche of financial impropriety leveled against it by the so called ‘’NFF Emergency Congress”.

He vehemently denied the allegations that board members partook in the sharing of the Super Eagles’ Brazil 2014 FIFA World Cup largesse of $3.6 million from the Federal Government.

According to him, ‘The Sports Minister personally brought the money in question to Brazil and delivered directly to the players and officials. No board member got a dime. lt is a case of giving a dog a bad name to hang it”.

On the issue of the Super Eagles’ quarrel over the FIFA World Cup participation money, he stated that both players and officials held a meeting where the players and coaching staff were told what they will get ahead of time just as they were also reminded that such money from FIFA comes two months after the competition.

Said he, ‘the truth is that the board adequately briefed the players and officials on the FIFA largesse and it was explained that the money only comes months after the World Cup. It is therefore arrant nonsense any talk that the board denied the players what is due to them”.

According to the prominent NFF figure, all the allegations are totally untrue as the Maigari- led NFF Executive Board and its management staff has been very prudent in the handling of the finances of the federation vis-a-viz the numerous programs the NFF executed in the years under review.

‘’It is very unfortunate that all manners of allegations are being brandished by those who are envious of the landmark achievements recorded by this present board. Need I recount that this board worked very hard to ensure that Nigeria won the coveted African Nations Cup in South Africa after 20 years of waiting even as the Golden Eaglets lifted again the FIFA U-17 World Cup in UAE last year while all our other national football teams did the country proud at every competition to warrant President Goodluck Jonathan playing host to the victorious teams as many times as possible this past four years”, the top official said.

 

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Maigari’s NFF board denies allegations of Corruption