Seven Burkinabe players refused UK visas for Nigeria friendly in London

Seven Burkinabe players failed to secure British visas ahead of an international friendly with Nigeria. the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) announced the development on Saturday.

As a result Nigeria's friendly against Burkina Faso in north London next week is cancelled because of the visa issues affecting travelling players.

The Super Eagles were using the match as part of preparations for their remaining qualifiers for the World Cup 2018 and Africa Cup of Nations 2019.
NFF official Chris Green said the cancellation was "no fault of either the organisers or the Nigeria Football Federation".

"We will announce further plans for the Super Eagles' preparation for these two important qualifying campaigns in due course," he added.

Burkina Faso officials were told of the visa issues late on Friday.

On Thursday, Nigeria drew 1-1 with Senegal in the first of its two scheduled friendly matches in the British capital.

Morocco beat Burkina 2-0 in a friendly in Marrakech on Friday.

US embassy assures Nigerians they are welcome to travel

The US embassy in Nigeria said on Wednesday that Nigerians were welcome to travel to the United States following confusion over President Donald Trump's new immigration rules.

A foreign affairs adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari, Abike Dabiri on Monday warned citizens against non-essential travel to the United States, as some Nigerians had been denied entry at the border.

"The US embassy in Abuja wishes to clarify that there is no reason for Nigerians with valid visas to postpone or cancel their travel to the United States," said the embassy in a statement.

"There is no prohibition against Nigerian lawful permanent residents or persons with a valid visa or other US government authorisation from entering the United States."

Trump signed a revised ban on refugees and on travellers from six Muslim-majority nations on Monday. Nigeria, which has a majority Muslim north and predominantly Christian south, is not on the list.

Nigeria's foreign minister Geoffrey Onyeama told a news conference it was "business as usual" with the United States, despite the earlier advisory from a presidential adviser.

Of the 2.1 million African immigrants living in the United States in 2015, 327,000 were born in Nigeria, according to data from the Pew Research Center, published in February.

AFP

FIFA struggling to regain fan confidence, Transparency says

FIFA is still struggling to regain the trust of soccer fans, with more than half those interviewed saying they had no confidence in the sport's governing body, according to a survey published on Thursday.

Corruption watchdog Transparency International, which conducted the survey jointly with Swedish-based Forza Football, added that FIFA's image may have been hurt by its attempts to increase revenue.
Fifty-three percent of 25,000 fans interviewed from 50 countries said they had no confidence in FIFA, which is trying to regain credibility after a corruption crisis in 2015 that saw dozens of officials indicted in the United States. Even so, that was an improvement over 69 percent last year, the survey said.

"For any organisation that relies so much on the fans -- without the fans football is dead, it's commercially dead, its passion is dead -- that is a rather serious situation," Transparency head Cobus de Swardt told Reuters.

"We don't underestimate the toughness of the job, but in that sense so far the news has been only moderately good."

Only 34 percent of those interviewed thought FIFA was actively fighting corruption. Sixty-six percent said that match-fixing was the type of corruption which most worried them.
Meanwhile, 43 percent said they disapproved of next year's flagship World Cup being staged in Russia.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino, elected one year ago to replace the disgraced Sepp Blatter, said the body has taken steps to make officials more accountable. But de Swardt said the public did not see it that way.

"FIFA puts out 50-page brochures talking of reform, but to the average fan, when I talk to them about what has changed in FIFA, they shake their heads," he said. "They have no idea what has really changed."
Shortly after Infantino took over, FIFA said it had revised its projected revenue for the 2015-2018 cycle upwards from $5 billion to $5.65 billion, with projected investments amounting to $5.55 billion.
However, de Swardt said this might have been perceived negatively.
"For the average fan, the problem is not that there is too little money in football, but there is too much, and fans see this in what they have to pay for tickets, merchandise, etc," he said.
He added that FIFA's struggle to attract new sponsors was another symptom of its troubles.
FIFA has signed only one top-tier partner, China's Wanda Group, since Infantino took over. Russia's Alfa Bank has agreed to be a regional sponsor.

"FIFA hasn't been really rebuilt to the extent where sponsors are falling over their feet to be associated with the FIFA name," said de Swardt. "I've had sponsors telling me that the would love to be associated with football but not with FIFA."

Players (Nigerians) warned to avoid two Maltese clubs

FIFPro, the World Footballers' Association have advised Nigerian  footballers against joining two clubs in Malta's 12-team Premier League after evidence emerged of poor treatment of foreign players, including players from the United States.

FIFPro, said in a statement 

that players who recently signed contracts with Mosta FC and Pembroke Athleta were "housed in cramped conditions, and were ignored or even threatened when they complained about not getting paid on time".

FIFPro said dozens of young players from outside the European Union had signed contracts with clubs in Malta, where they can field seven foreign players per match, with a view to launching a career in Europe and because it is relatively easy to secure a working visa.

"However, most players on the Mediterranean island earn less than $2,000 per month and, according to the recently-released 2016 FIFPro Global Employment Report, 79% are not paid on time. Almost half (49%) are not satisfied with medical support," FIFPro said.

The body quoted an American teenager at Pembroke who claimed his complaints about not receiving his salary of 700 euros per month on time were ignored.

FIFPro said it had also spoken to several Nigerians who said they were among 15 foreign players squeezed into a four-bedroom house after signing to play for Mosta. Some complained of the cold because the home had no central heating.

"They can bring African players at any time, they just get rid of the old ones," one of the Nigerians said. "Nigerian players are better off in Africa."

Nigeria's Ezekiel Imoh scores for Qatari club

http://shoof.alkass.net/shoof/play.php?id=QVpXWDBDdndZanRjQT0q

Nigeria’s Imoh Ezekiel was on the score sheet as his club Al Arabi defeated Al Wakrah 3-1 in a Qatar Stars League match on Saturday.

With his side having a slender 2-1 lead into stoppage-time, the one-time Super Eagles striker beat his marker to nod the ball into the net from close range.

It was Ezekiel’s sixth goal in 20 appearances for the Doha-based club.

Chilean Luis Jimenez scored a brace in the game after Al Wakrah’s Mahir Yousef grabbed the opener for the bottom-of-the table club.

The victory takes Al Arabi into mid-table in the 14-team league on 23 points from 22 matches. Only last week, Ezekiel’s club suffered the heaviest defeat in their recent history, a 7-0 whitewash in the hands of former Barcelona great Xavi Hernandez’s club Al Sadd.

Al Arabi is popularly known as the “ Dream Team” in Qatar.

Al Arabi has won the league seven-times and there last was in the 1995-1996 season, where Nigeria’s former Super Eagles striker Richard Owubokiri was top striker in the league with 16 goals that season.

The club’s most renowned player is Gabriel Batistuta, former Fiorentina and Argentina great.

Ezekiel received his first call-up to the Nigeria national team in February 2014 and his last on 3 September 2016. He earned his first senior cap on 6 March, in the 0–0 draw with Mexico in a friendly match after coming on as a second-half substitute for Victor Moses.

Arik Air founder eyes lawsuit over government takeover

LAGOS:  The founder of Nigeria's largest airline Arik Air, placed in receivership earlier this week, accused the government of seizing Arik to meet a political goal of creating a "national carrier" and said he would challenge the move in court.

State-owned "bad bank" AMCON said on Thursday the move arose from Arik's inability to pay workers and creditors. Arik is West Africa's biggest airline by passenger numbers but has been hard hit by Nigeria's currency crisis as its customers are invoiced in naira but fuel suppliers are paid in dollars.

Arik founder Michael Arumemi-Ikhide said he believed the government staged the move after a team travelled overseas in search of partners but were turned down and advised to work with the decade-old Arik.

"This (takeover) was designed by the government. Ever since this government came into power there has been the ambition to have a national carrier," Arumeni-Ikhide told Reuters. "We are going to challenge the forceful takeover in court. By earlier next week we will be filing the case."

Analysts say the dispute showcases the complexity of doing business in Nigeria, with some suggesting it could damage Nigeria's efforts to shake off its image as a risky frontier market for international investors.

Arumemi-Ikhide said AMCON had used armed police to take control of the airline on Thursday, but that shareholders have retained their shares. AMCON said it had a court order to take over Arik and had to use policemen and bailiffs to carry it out.

Arumeni-Ikhide said the action recalled 2010 when British billionaire Richard Branson pulled out of Virgin Nigeria, a 10-year partnership with the Nigerian government he helped set up, citing alleged interference by politicians and regulators.

AMCON said on Thursday a receivership manager had been put in charge of Arik as the airline had been fallen into a "precarious situation largely attributable to its heavy financial debt burden (and) bad corporate governance".

Arumemi-Ikhide denied this. He said Arik's debt had been secured as a Union Bank guarantee to buy new planes through European export banks. But he said the dollar guarantee was turned into a more expensive naira loan without recourse for Arik when Union Bank was rescued by AMCON in 2010 to help stem a financial crisis.

That brought Arik's total indebtedness to 147 billion naira ($484 million). But Arumemi-Ikhide said Arik had grown rapidly and had been planning to raise equity capital of as much as $1 billion in the second quarter and then a possible stock market listing in Lagos and London, rather than sourcing debt.

He said Arik had an enterprise value of around $4 billion.

In 2015, the Nigerian government set up a committee on establishing a national airline, in fulfilment of campaign promises which brought President Muhammadu Buhari's All Progressive Congress (APC) to power.

An APC transition paper seen by Reuters had proposed merging a dozen debt-laden airlines on AMCON's books into a single carrier. It would include Arik and operate in partnership with a global airline to serve the West and Central African region.

Tanzania, Nigeria's Dangote reach natural gas supply deal

DAR ES SALAAM: Tanzania and Nigeria's Dangote Cement have reached a deal on the supply of natural gas to the firm's manufacturing plant in the East African country after negotiations stalled over prices, Tanzanian President John Magufuli said on Saturday.

The $500 million cement factory in the southeastern Tanzanian town of Mtwara, set up last year with an annual capacity of 3 million tonnes, runs on expensive diesel generators and has sought government support to reduce costs.

But the negotiations had stalled with the state-run Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (TPDC) saying the company was seeking "at-the-well prices".

After meeting Aliko Dangote, the company's chairman who is Africa's richest man, Magufuli blamed unspecified middlemen of interfering with supply plans and said the issue has now been resolved with gas supplies to be sold at a "reasonable" tariff.

"They (Dangote Cement) will now buy natural gas directly from the state-run TPDC instead of going through middlemen," Magufuli told journalists after the meeting.

He did not give details on the new tariff.

Dangote, Africa's biggest cement producer, has an annual production capacity of 43.6 million tonnes and targets output of between 74 million and 77 million tonnes by the end of 2019 and 100 million tonnes of capacity by 2020.

The company plans to roll out plants across Africa. In Tanzania, Dangote is seeking to double the country's annual output of cement to 6 million tonnes.

The country announced in February that it had discovered an additional 2.17 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of possible natural gas deposits in an onshore field, raising its total estimated recoverable natural gas reserves to more than 57 tcf.

REUTERS