Vanguard (Lagos)
John Egbokhan
26 October 2009
Abuja — The failure of many journalists to get media accreditation to cover the FIFA Under-17 World Cup, holding across eight centres in Nigeria, has been blamed on the Local Organising Committee.
Making this damning verdict, a media officer of the Federation of International Football Associations (FIFA), told Sports Vanguard, in confidence that the LOC exhausted most of the materials brought by FIFA to accredit persons not directly connected with the organisation of the tournament and coverage of the matches.
"We told the LOC that we were coming with certain numbers of materials for the accreditation."
Like for Abuja, we said made provisions for about 600 journalists but the LOC, in the end, secured accreditations for about 2000 persons, most of whom are not in the media.
"We are pained that most journalists are yet to get their accreditations but we had specific numbers of materials for this tournament and those are the ones which have been exhausted. The LOC has to work out something, because we cannot do more than we can do", said the FIFA official, at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel.
Interestingly, most of the persons wearing accreditation tags, indeed, have no business with the tournament and its coverage. Some are friends, associates and family members of the LOC, who flaunt their tags, doing nothing, while journalists continue gnashing their teeth and hoping for respite.
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