NFF sanctions 4 referees over poor officiating

The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) Referees Committee has sanctioned four referees found guilty of poor officiating and mismanagement of the game.

This is contained in a statement by Dani Zubairu, the Secretary of the referees’ committee, made available to our reporter on Thursday in Abuja.

It said those affected were two centre referees and two assistant referees.

According to the statement, Joseph Ogabor, the centre referee who officiated the South West derby in Ibadan between Shooting Stars and Remo Stars, has been banned from further officiating of matches till the end of the first stanza of the league.

It also said that Ogabor was found guilty of improper action when he denied Remo Stars goal against Shooting, a decision which affected the result of the Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) encounter.

The statement disclosed that the committee had carefully assessed and reviewed the match and discovered that the new FIFA-badge referee erred in his decision, while his assistants, Bosede Momoh and Hulda Nkwocha were warned to brace up and improve on their skills or risk sanction.

It further said that one of the Assistant Referees in the Kano Pillars vs Enyimba match, Tejiri Digbori was found wanting for attempting to cancel a goal due to poor offside judgment in the match played in Kano a fortnight ago.

The statement added that Digbori’s decision to stop the goal was overturned by the centre referee, Quadri Adebimpe, who was commended by the committee “for keeping to the tenets of the rules of the game.”

“However, the defaulting Assistant Referee is banned till the end of the first stanza.”

It said that the Assistant Referee 2 in the Nassarawa vs Ifeanyi Ubah game, Abdurazak IB of Borno Referees Council have been asked to rest for the next eight weeks beginning from this weekend’s matches.

It said that the punishment followed his picking a wrong infringement on the field of play, thereby, misleading the referee to award an undeserved penalty.

The committee explained that Abdurazak had rushed to the penalty area line before the referee actually signaled for a penalty, an act the Committee considered at variance with the Laws of the game.

“The referee, Abubakar Zubairu was seriously warned to live up to expectations in subsequent matches and banned for two weeks.”

It said that all the decisions were arrived at after watching video clips of all the matches including match reports from Referees Assessors.

The committee warned that referees must be fair and firm in their assignments to avoid running foul of the laws of the game that would earn them sanctions.