The chairman of the National Sports Commission (NSC) Alhaji Shehu Dikko has revealed how they found out that some players in the team of Dr Congo that defeated Super Eagles in the world cup qualifiers playoff could be ineligible, OwnGoalNigeria.com reports.
Nigeria protested to FIFA challenging the eligibility of around seven players in the team of DR Congo that will represent Africa at the international playoff in Mexico next year.
Top of the protest is that Dr Congo forbids citizens from having dual nationality, and presently couple of players in the team didn’t renounce their other citizenship before getting a DR Congo passport.
In light of that a protest letter was officially sent to FIFA demanding for the win to be awarded to Nigeria, and also be given a chance to represent Africa at the intercontinental playoff.
“So, when we saw the squad that was put in place for the playoffs, the squad was named on November 1 and the playoffs were on November 13, we looked at the squad of our opponents. We found out from the beginning that even the Congolese had already named players of other nationalities who had not been cleared by FIFA in their squad. That was an alarm, so everybody started monitoring, even though the players were not being played.
“This issue did not start because we lost the playoffs. We had been watching what they were doing, and then we found out a day before the qualifiers that they were getting clearances so that the players were qualified to play”, Dikko said in an interview with Arise TV.
“But if you look back, what gave them the confidence to name a player of another nationality in their squad to play a match two weeks later, when he wasn’t qualified to play for them until the day before the match they received permission? That raised alarm for us after the qualifiers,” he explained further.
On the chances of the petition working in favour of Nigeria, Dikko explained that they are confident because there was a breach of the constitution of DR Congo regarding the players.
It is the responsibility of a federation to ensure passports are issued in line with the law. You cannot just issue a passport to someone and change his nationality. If the passport is not issued according to the law of that country, it affects everything,” Dikko said.
“Yes, we lost. Unfortunately, everybody was angry about it. We are not sore losers, but it’s part of the rules. We bring in our legal team, we bring in our international lawyers. We look at the legal opinion, we look at the laws, and we found out there is some suspicion that some things have not been done right according to the laws of the game.
“There are probably, from what we found out, misrepresentations to FIFA to obtain those clearances,” he added
