The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) have clarified on the appearance record of captain Ahmed Musa after saying he has yet to reach the milestone of a 100 caps.
Records by world football governing FIFA showed Ahmed Musa has so far played 98 times for Nigeria after two games involving the country were chalked off.
The matches were the friendly against Togo in France in June 2017, when both teams made more than the allowed substitutions, and a 2018 World Cup qualifier in Algeria, which was voided in favour of the Algerians after Nigeria fielded an ineligible player, Shehu Abdullahi.
NFF spokesman Ademola Olajire said: “We defer to FIFA in this regard, so Ahmed Musa has 98 caps.
“If he featured, as expected, in the home-and-away matches against Central African Republic in October, he will clock the tally of 100 and the celebrations will follow in full flow.”
On Tuesday in Cape Verde, Ahmed Musa was rewarded with a cash gift of 10 million Naira by the NFF after it was erroneously reported he had reached this milestone.
The 28-year-old forward made his full international debut on September 5, 2010, as a substitute against Madagascar in an AFCON qualifier.
He has since featured in two World Cups and won the 2013 AFCON.
This shows how the level of NFF record keeping has degenerated overtime and I think this is the right time to educate them and remind the weak organization led by Melvin Amaju Pinnick and Dr. Sanusi the secretary of NFF that they should please start to keep accurate records of the number of yellow card(s) and red card(s) that our players are issued so that we can avoid the repeat of the ugly incident of the last world cup qualifier between Algeria and Nigeria in Algiers. Please let us use this forum and medium to please remind them always. God help Nigeria