…As NFF, LMC continue business as usual
By Willy Kings
After over two months of late Nasarawa united defender, Chineme Martins’ demise, the club medical team has revealed that they were unable to revive the player’s life due to the rush by coaches, players and fans into the scene, and the refusal of the ambulance to start.
The club’s head of medical, Baba Zubeiru aka ‘Doctor’ revealed to corereporters that the two medical teams; the home and away team were not allowed to revive the player’s life because of the crowd that gathered. Adding that, even when they tried to forced their way in they couldn’t beacuse of the crowd.
“What happened that day was that a lot of persons rush into the pitch immediately he slumped preventing us from doing our job. The medical team of NUFC and that of Katsina united were on ground, but it was surprise to us that even the coaches and players rush there making it difficult for us to work.
“Also, it was unfortunate that even the ambulance refused to kick.
“This is not the first time we were face with such situation, we have handled it before but this case happened in such a way that i couldn’t understand. For instance, all those who rush to the field, if you stop them they will fill otherwise,” he stated.
Though, there are lots of insinuations that Nasarawa Utd FC didn’t have trained Medical personnel on the day tragedy struck despites the present of her head of medical team, Zubeiru. They claimed that Baba Zubeiru is not trained medical personnel.
That concerned football stakeholders’ observations about Baba Zubeirus status fell on deaf ears. Ironically, they alleged that .Baba Zubeiru exposed his level of incompetence with the handling of late Martins’ case.
In the same vein, .the club rickety Ambulance denied Martins a life line
In response, Baba Zubeiru said, “To be honest, go and find out, i am a commissioner officer, i am license as a technique, i have been working with government for a long time, and you cannot threat somebody if you are not license to do so.
In the same vain, the football apex body in the country waded in immediately into the show of shame by the club medics in handling of the player’s case which was condemned by all and sundry and set up a twelve man investigative panel headed by Dr. Peter Singabele, a former member of the NFF Executive Committee and member of the Committee on Sports Medicine of the Confederation of African Football with the Nasarawa united chairman, Barr. Isaac Danladi as member.
The committee was mandated to investigate the medical, security and administrative lapses which led to the untimely demise of the defender, who slumped during a match between his club and Katsina United at the Lafia City Stadium and gave up the ghost before he was taken to hospital.
However, corereporters gathered that after the committee visited the state governor, Engr. Abdullahi Sule the next thing was for the federation to release a statement that the family of the late Nasarawa United defender, Chineme Martins has rejected an autopsy.
The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has set up a fact-finding panel to probe the circumstances that led to the sudden death of Martins during an NPFL game against Katsina United.
“It was a shock to learn that the family has refused for an autopsy on their son,” an official said.
“They have a right to do this, but it would really have assisted the panel if they had an autopsy report to work with.”
However, shortly after his demise, LMC were reported to have sanctioned the match commissioner who was in charge of the said match for not inspected the medical facilities before the kickoff.
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