Pinnick accepts responsibility for Super Eagles World Cup blunder

Following FIFA sanctions on Tuesday, the President of the Nigeria Football Federation, Amaju Pinnick, has taken responsibility for the error, just as he pleaded for forgiveness.
Pinnick through his official Twitter handle: @AmajuPinnick, on Wednesday narrated what led to the incident.
He tweeted: “I’ll start by tendering my wholehearted apology to Nigeria and Nigerians for the Shehu Abdullahi error.
“It is unforgivable and could have undone months of hard work. As head of the Federation, I take responsibility for this. It happened on my watch.
“While accepting the Federation’s fault here, let me quickly explain how this went by unnoticed.
“It doesn’t change the fact that we didn’t keep our eyes on the ball and will help us in our planned restructuring of the Technical & Competitions Department.
“Shehu Abdullahi got his first yellow card in our very first preliminary match against Swaziland away.
“When the draws for the Group Stages were made, the Technical staff made a grave error; assumption.
“They assumed the cards gotten prior would not count.
“To be fair to them, throughout the qualifying series, official match documents didn’t even show that Shehu Abdullahi was on a yellow card.
“For instance, when we played Cameroon, Mikel, Moses and Balogun were put on notice that they had yellow cards.
“Team meetings were even held about how to handle their cards so they wouldn’t miss crucial games.
“Shehu Abdullahi was never in the mix.
“Shehu then received a yellow against Zambia in our penultimate game, two years after the Swaziland match.”