Nigeria’s football federation has taken Edo Queens’ case to the CAF Appeals Committee, hoping to reinstate a title the club won on the pitch but lost on a technicality.
The dispute goes back to the WAFU-B final on September 5 in Ouagadougou, where Edo Queens and Ghana’s Ampem Darkoa Ladies finished level at 2-2. The referee sent the teams straight to penalties, and Edo Queens won the shoot-out 4-1. That secured the zone’s spot in the CAF Women’s Champions League.
Ampem Darkoa protested, and on Sunday CAF sided with them. Under Article 72.4 of the tournament rules, the game should have gone to two periods of extra time first. CAF wiped out the shoot-out and ordered the match to resume from extra time.
The NFF’s argument
In its appeal, filed Tuesday, the NFF says the mistake belonged to the officials, not the players. Edo Queens did not ask for penalties and simply followed the referee’s instructions, and CAF found no misconduct or bad faith on their part.
The federation stresses a key distinction: benefiting from an official’s mistake is not the same as causing it. In its words, there is a gap between “benefiting from an official’s error and causing or procuring the error.” Winning the shoot-out, it argues, doesn’t make Edo Queens responsible for the rules breach after the fact.
It also questions whether CAF has the power to cancel a completed shoot-out when neither side caused the problem. Any punishment, the NFF says, needs a clear basis in the regulations and must be proportionate to the irregularity.
The NFF is asking the Appeals Committee to reverse the decision and confirm Edo Queens’ 4-1 win, arguing that a team that did what the referee told it to do should keep the result it earned.
