Thursday, 28th March 2024
To guardian.ng
Search
Breaking News:

Okumagba is not chairman of Nigeria Football Supporters Club, says Ladipo

By Gowon Akpodonor
06 May 2017   |   4:33 am
Barely 48 hours after Vincent Okumagba rolled out his plans to mobilise 1,000 supporters for the 2019 AFCON qualifier between the Super Eagles and Bafana Bafana of South Africa, the President General of the Nigeria Football Supporters Club....

Okumagba had told The Guardian on Thursday that his leadership of the Nigeria Football Supporters Club was working round the clock to ensure victory for the Super Eagles in both the AFCON and World Cup qualifiers against the Bafana Bafana of South Africa and Lions of Cameroon.

Barely 48 hours after Vincent Okumagba rolled out his plans to mobilise 1,000 supporters for the 2019 AFCON qualifier between the Super Eagles and Bafana Bafana of South Africa, the President General of the Nigeria Football Supporters Club, Dr. Rafiu Ladipo has declared that Okumagba is not the chairman of the body.

In fact, Ladipo said in a chat with The Guardian yesterday that anybody that does any business transaction with Okumagba in the name of the Supporters Club is at his or her own risk.

Okumagba had told The Guardian on Thursday that his leadership of the Nigeria Football Supporters Club was working round the clock to ensure victory for the Super Eagles in both the AFCON and World Cup qualifiers against the Bafana Bafana of South Africa and Lions of Cameroon. He said that some corporate organisations and individuals were behind him in his desire to change the face of the Supporters Club.

But Ladipo said yesterday that such claim by Okumagba was meant to ‘deceive innocent’ Nigerians saying: “Okumagba is not the National Chairman of the Nigeria Football Supporters Club. Our chairman is Rev. Samuel Ikpea, who emerged during our election in December last year in Lagos. Over 250 registered/authentic members of the club across the 19 state chapters of the country converged at the Teslim Balogun Stadium, Lagos to elect Rev. Ikpea and the new executive members. So, anybody who does any business transaction with Okumagba in the name of the Supporters Club is on his own.

“The sports minister was deceived initially by Okumagba and his group until I made it clear to him that it was not possible to move the entire members from every part of the federation to Abuja for the election. The Minster saw reasons with me and he gave us the go ahead to conduct the election in Lagos. Maybe, some people think that the supporters club is an avenue to make quick money by way of visa racketeering. It is not so,” Ladipo stated.

The Guardian recalls that while Rev. Samuel Ikpea emerged as chairman in the Lagos election of the supporters club, the one conducted in Abuja same day produced Vincent Okumagba as chairman.

In this article

0 Comments