Pinnick congratulates Dikko on FIFA appointment

President of Nigeria Football Federation, Mr. Amaju Melvin Pinnick on Friday congratulated NFF 2^ndVice President/LMC Chairman Shehu Dikko, after the soft –spoken administrator and marketing and strategic development expert was appointed a Member of the FIFA Football Stakeholders Committee. FIFA ratified the appointment of Dikko at its Council meeting held Friday, 27^th October 2017 in Calcutta, India.

Dikko’s appointment made him the third Nigerian to be appointed into a FIFA Committee this year, after Pinnick himself was enlisted into the influential Organizing Committee for FIFA Competitions and former Lagos State Chief Judge, Justice Ayotunde Philips was elected Member of the FIFA Ethics Committee (Adjudicatory Council).  

“It has been a glorious year for Nigerian Football. We have qualified for the FIFA World Cup with remarkable ease, much more comfortably than anyone could have imagined after the group phase draw. We qualified for the CHAN. Now, we have people in very important positions in world football, signifying global reckoning, and it is a thing of absolute joy.

“Shehu (Dikko) fully deserves his appointment. He has been doing excellent job as Chairman of LMC and as 2^nd Vice President and Chairman of the NFF Marketing, Sponsorship and Television Advisory Committee, as well as the NFF Strategy Committee. I believe he will fly our country’s flag very high in that committee and his experience, deep knowledge and work ethic would be huge value added to FIFA’s objectives in developing football across board,” Pinnick told thenff.com.

Its modus operandi states that the FIFA Football Stakeholders Committee “shall advise and assist FIFA on all matters relating to Football (including women’s football, futsal and beach soccer), particularly the structure of the game, as well as on all technical matters. The committee shall also deal with relationship between clubs, players, leagues, member associations, Confederations and FIFA, as well as issues relating to the interest of Club Football worldwide, and analyse the basic aspects of football training and technical development.” 

The FIFA Football Stakeholders Committee is a merger of several committees (among them Football Committee and Strategic Studies Committees), in line with FIFA’s new organizational strategy that cut the list of committees from 20 to 11. President of CONCACAF and FIFA Vice President, Victor Montagliani is Chairman of the committee. The membership cuts across all major stakeholders in football comprising Presidents of Member Associations, former players (including former Brazilian World Cup –winning captain Cafu and Dutchman Robin Van der Sar) and Chairmen of Leagues (including the Chairman of EPL and CEO of the Bundesliga).

World football –ruling body FIFA now conducts independent and very rigorous and thorough global integrity, background and eligibility checks on all its potential appointees well before –hand, and Pinnick, Justice Philips and Dikko deserve accolades for passing the tough tests conducted by independent and renown global experts.

It can be recalled that seven (7) Nigerians have been appointed into various committees of the Confederation of African Football (CAF), also this year. 

Pinnick, who was the arrowhead of the Change Team that took over CAF in March this year after Issa Hayatou’s 29 years in office, is Member of the CAF Executive Committee and the CAF Emergency Committee, and also President of AFCON.

NFF 1^st VP Seyi Akinwunmi is member of the Committee on Youth Competitions; FIFA’s new boy Dikko is member of the Committee on Inter-Clubs Competitions and Club Licensing System; Ibrahim Musa Gusau is member of Organizing Committee for CHAN; Senator Obinna Ogba is in the Committee for Futsal and Beach Soccer; Yusuf Ahmed ‘Fresh’ is member of the CAF Technical and Development Committee; Dr. Peter Singabele is in the CAF Medical Committee and; Chisom Mbonu is member of the Organizing Committee for Women’s Football.