To be or not to be? Amaju Pinnick seeks 2nd term in FIFA Council

Former President of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) Amaju Pinnick will this Wednesday be hoping to follow in the footsteps of the late Nigerian football administration icon Oyo Orok Oyo by winning a second term in the executive committee of the football governing body, now commonly known as FIFA Council.

Oyo became a member of the then FIFA Executive Committee at the General Assembly held at the National Theatre in Lagos in March 1980 and went on to win a second term in Abidjan in 1984 before being voted out in Morocco in 1988 when Gambia’s Omar Sey took his position.

Pinnick will be hoping also to secure a second term this Wednesday in Cairo at the 14^th Extraordinary General Assembly.  He won the FIFA seat in Morocco four years ago to become the third Nigerian in the FIFA Council after that of Oyo Orok Oyo (1980 to 1988), Amos Adamu (2006 to 2013).

Pinnick has a loaded field to contest against. There are six positions for election as the seventh seat for Africa is automatically taken by the CAF president.

The field is further narrowed as one of the electable six seats is reserved for a woman.

CAF’s sitting 5^th vice president Kanizat Ibrahim from the Comoros Islands will slug it out with sitting member Isha Johansen from Sierra Leone.

The others contesting for the five other seats are: Ivorian Yacine Idriss Diallo, Senegal’s Augustin Senghor, Niger Republic’s Djibrilla ‘Pele’ Hima Hamidou, Zambia’s Andrew Kamanga, Mauritanian Ahmed Yahya, Benin Republic’s Mathurin De Chacus and Djibouti’s Souleman Hassan Waberi also in the poll.