The Nigeria Football Federation has warned against persecution and public show trial of its officials by the Special Presidential Investigatory Panel (SPIP) on the recovery of public property, headed by Okoi Obona-Obla.
The NFF through its lawyers, Mamman Nasir in a statement made available to Breaking Timesbemoaned the “orchestrated media campaign” against it officials and the use of an “online media mob” to promote the pre-determined media reportage of the activities of Chief Obon-Obla and SPIP.It must be pointed out that while these publications of the news of the warrant of arreststarted on Wednesday 9th January 2019, the date on the face of the eventual published warrant unlawfully obtained from a magistrate’s court in Abuja is Thursday 10th January 2019.
The obvious conclusion here is that some interested persons have an unrestrained and direct access to Chief Obono-Obla, and have thus secured a front row seat that allows them a pre-knowledge of all steps to be taken by Chief Obono-Obla and or SPIP, which they gleefully publish ahead of these steps.”The statement added.
The council to the NFF questioned why a warrant of arrest will be obtained from a magistrate court instead of a High court as prescribed by the law setting up the SPIP.
“More grievous to the rights of our client and its officials is the fact that Chief Obono-Obla
and SPIP went to secure a warrant of arrest from a magistrate court contrary to the clear
provisions of the Recovery of Public Property (Special Provisions) Act, the law setting up the
SPIP, that ONLY the Federal High Court is vested with the jurisdiction to issue warrants for
the SPIP. It can only be concluded that this deviation was purposely to achieve the aim of
avoiding the protection afforded everyone, including the affected NFF officials, under the
same law that set up SPIP, which requires the SPIP to present a prima facie case to a judge
of the Federal High Court to justify its case before a warrant of arrest may be issued under
the hand of the judge”.
Barrister Nasir however stated,that he has filed a suit against the presidential panel in the FCT high court Abuja.”Our client and the affected NFF officials have also taken the additional step to file a suit,
FC/ABJ/CS/17/2019 at the Federal High Court, Abuja Division (The only court statutory
conferred with jurisdiction over SPIP matters under the enabling act). The suit is to allow
this whole sordid matter to be ventilated in the Court of the land and to check the
oppression of our client and its officials.”
