Mike
Pa
Michael Obi, the father of the Chelsea star, Mikel, has blamed the
President of the Confederation of African Football, Mr. Isa Hayatou for
his son’s failure to win the African Footballer of the Year award.
The CAF/GLO African award was given to
Yahaya Toure, with Mikel and Didier Drogba finishing in second and third
places respectively.
He said not only he, but all Nigerians,
were just waiting for the pronouncement of Mikel as the winner, adding
that his friends from Jos and Lagos were just on the wings waiting to
call and congratulate him before the name of Yaya was announced.
Pa Obi, who spoke in an exclusive
interview with our correspondent in Jos on Wednesday, said that the CAF
president had always exhibited a dislike for footballers from Anglophone
to those from the Francophone countries.
He however said that the family was not
perturbed that their scion did not get the award because of their firm
belief in God and that at God’s own appointed time, Mikel will get the
award. He said that the fact that Mikel congratulated the winner
immediately and flew back to his base without any complaint was
reflections of the family’s belief in the hands of God in the destiny of
man.
He said, “We know that it was he, Issa
Hayatou that denied him that award. Yaya himself said so that his friend
was worthy to take the award.
“We were there; all gathered around the
television watching what was happening and I saw all that happened. Some
friends had started phoning me from Lagos and Jos, especially from
Lagos, waiting to say congratulations to me because everybody had in
mind that Mikel would be the person to win the award. But I think with
Hayatou, the CAF president, it became impossible. Not that I think, he
did it because some papers wrote to him that since he had been on that
seat, Nigeria had not enjoyed such things.
“But all I know is that I am somebody
who does not get worried about certain things. If you observe, you can
see what I have written on our transport vehicles, ‘God’s Time is the
Best’,” Pa Obi said
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