Probe Nasiru Jibril over illegal transfers now, Real Sapphire football academy tells Amaju Pinnick

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The sport director of Real Sapphire football academy Mr Francis Ogete has called out Amaju Pinnick to probe the activities of the TMS Manager who is in charge of the International Transfer Certificate (ICT)

Ogete insisted that it is common knowledge for us to know that a player with Nigerian football history and passport can’t play football internationally without passing through the NFF.

We took five players to Egypt to secure Latvia visas for them in a bid to honour our pre-contract agreement with FK Ventspils and this players were hijacked in Egypt by Zane Abdulhammid who is an Egyptian scout.


In a situation like this who do we call to help us? Is the NFF not responsible for Nigerian players? This players have played for the academy in the FA cup and that implies that the NFF have their names as they were cleared to play for Real Sapphire in the FA Cup.

Let me use this medium to remind Nasiru that when this issue started we heard that one of the players, Kazeem Balemo has started playing for a club in Egypt.

“I called Nasiru instantly and he confirmed to me that the Chairman of Nnewi FC was the one that begged him to issue ITC for the player. We threatened to fight but Nasiru pleaded and asked the Nnewi FC chairman to plead to. The ITC was reversed immediately by Nasiru who called the Egyptian federation to cancel the move and it was done. Has I talk to you now Kazeem is somewhere in Ibadan and out of football for not honouring his contract with Real Sapphire.

The story of the other four players has been different as three of them now play professionally in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Pinnick should ask Nasiru how this players were cleared? If the hand of Nasiru is clean then the NFF should call any Football Federation involved to order.

Are we saying the NFF shouldn’t care for academies and their players?

We will not relent on this issue, the only answer Nasiru has given us is to go to fifa which he knows that such move will cost several millions of naira.

We won’t be intimidated, we will fight this course to the end and we are calling on Amaju Pinnick to use his good office to resolve this matter immediately as issues like this only helps to promote injustice and continuous defacing of the NFF.

Francis Ogete