FIFA swaps headers to photo of Pinnick’s Birnin Kebbi stadium amid NFF corruption debate

FIFA’s Twitter and Facebook profile headers were replaced on social media with an image of the recently built mini stadium in Birnin Kebbi — a facility linked to former Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) president Amaju Pinnick — at a time when calls over alleged NFF corruption are trending online. Social users shared screenshots of the new header and flagged the timing of the change, which quickly became the subject of online discussion.

The stadium in question is the FIFA-funded Birnin Kebbi mini stadium. The project was launched in 2020 with an estimated cost of about $1.19 million, and was presented as part of FIFA’s Goal/legacy support for grassroots facilities in Nigeria. Local and national officials attended the foundation and commissioning ceremonies, and the facility has been referenced repeatedly in media reports about FIFA-funded projects in Nigeria.

Reaction online has been mixed. Some social posts read the header swap as a symbolic reminder of FIFA’s role in funding local projects and used it to criticize the NFF’s handling of funds. Others shared the image simply as news. The NFF told reporters that a single social post or image on FIFA’s account should not be treated as formal communication — stressing that no official message had been received by the federation about any linked announcement.

The header change comes against a backdrop of past allegations and scrutiny of governance under Amaju Pinnick. Pinnick and other NFF officials faced high-profile accusations and legal action in 2019 relating to alleged misappropriation of funds; those events and later investigations have left Nigerian football administration under intermittent public and media criticism. Recent reports and watchdog pieces have also highlighted stalled or disputed FIFA-funded projects, including a separate Ugborodo facility, which continue to fuel public debate.

At this stage there is no public evidence that FIFA changed its headers in direct response to the social media calls over alleged corruption, and FIFA has not issued a formal explanation linking the header image to the controversy. The image has been circulated and commented on widely by social accounts and local media, but the motive for the change — if intentional and message-driven — has not been officially confirmed.