BY JUDE OPARA, Abuja
The newly elected president of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), Chris Giwa yesterday assumed office as the boss of the nation’s football.

Giwa who arrived the secretariat of the football house at exactly 1.55 pm was received by some of the other board members who were already on ground waiting for him. He immediately went straight into the office of the president of the NFF where he had a closed door meeting with his colleagues. However, that meeting did not start until a lengthy prayer offered by board member, Sani Mohammed Fema for the Muslim faithfuls while Giwa himself led in the Christian prayer.

Addressing the sporting media on arrival, Giwa who is also the Proprietor of Giwa FC of Jos said his main priority was to make sure that all the estranged members of the Nigeria football family were united again even as he insisted that his election was validly conducted by members of the congress present.

“We have to move forward and get the house together because football is one game Nigerians love so much and it is our desire for everybody to come together for us to operate. We must ensure that we have one football house and I want to say here that we don’t have a split.

“Let me also address this erroneous impression that is gaining grounds that there were two congresses on Tuesday. We had only one congress and that was at the Chida International Hotel and the agenda of that congress was that it was an elective congress’’.

The president also revealed that one early action he will take was to relocate the secretariat of the NFF to its new office located at the Package B of the Abuja National Stadium even as he insisted that the present office despite the fire incident was not conducive enough to serve as the football house of a country like Nigeria.

“Certainly I believe we will move out of this place immediately. Apart from the incident that took place here, it has been my desire that when I get into office the first thing I will do is to move the secretariat to a more befitting place and I want to assure that in the next one or two weeks the secretariat will move to its new office”.

The soft-spoken president equally rejected the claim that what prevented the immediate past executive committee form moving into the office was lack of fund arguing that if it was a priority, then it would have been achieved.

However, all the management staff of the NFF including the general secretary, Barr. Musa Amadu were conspicuously absent from the office and were not part of the staff that received the new president.

Other members of the executive committee present at the meeting were the first vice president, Chief Obinna Ogba from South East, Chief Effiomg Johnson from South South, Adama Yahaya North Central, Felix Obuah South South and Sani Mohammed Fema North East.

However, some other elected members of the executive who were not present at the meeting included; Deji Tinubu and Otunba Dele Ajayi both representing the South West, Muazu Suleiman and Sherif Inua both representing the North west, Felix Ayansi-Agwu representing the South East and Farouk Yarma representing the North East.