Former Nigeria Football Federation president, Amaju Pinnick, has revealed why sportswear giants Adidas and Puma severed commercial relationships with Nigerian football, alleging that an incident involving three Nigerians led to the latter blacklisting the country.
Pinnick disclosed this in the latest episode of “The Pinnick Tapes” (Remastered): NFF Scandals EXposed, published on Sunday Oliseh’s YouTube channel, Global Football Insights With Oliseh on Friday.
Speaking about the challenges he faced in attracting sponsors after assuming office as NFF president, Pinnick said Adidas had indicated its intention to leave shortly after he took over.
He said he was surprised by the decision and travelled to Zurich to meet the company’s president in an attempt to persuade the sportswear giant to reconsider.
“I was utterly flabbergasted when I got the letter from Adidas. A few weeks or a few months into my being NFF president, they were leaving.
“I flew to Zurich to see the president because they had a relationship with Adidas,” Pinnick said.
Pinnick said efforts to convince Adidas to remain were unsuccessful, adding that he later discovered that several issues had influenced the company’s decision.
He, however, declined to disclose some of the details, saying he did not want to indict anyone publicly.
“It was later I found out so many things that were…that I cannot come out in the media to say. I don’t like indicting people. I don’t like speaking. But I went deep. But I knew you were not coming,” he said.
The former NFF boss said the sponsorship crisis became more apparent when other major companies were also leaving or indicating plans to leave Nigerian football.
“When we came on, Globacom was leaving, Adidas had left, General Insurance had left, Guinness—they wrote us that they were leaving,” he said.
Pinnick said he subsequently sought to establish a relationship with Puma but initially encountered resistance from the company’s top executive.
He said he was introduced to the Puma boss during the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations in Equatorial Guinea, but the executive initially refused to speak with him after learning that he was Nigerian.
“I was introduced to the head of Puma. The head of Puma meant he understood that I was a Nigerian, not even as president of anything at that point. He didn’t want to talk to me,” Pinnick recalled.
According to him, the executive eventually agreed to meet him and recounted an alleged incident involving three Nigerians who had visited his home on Christmas Day.
