League Management Company (LMC) chairman, Mallam Shehu Dikko has stressed that January 13 remains the kick-off date for the kick-off of the 2019 season in Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL).
Sports247.ng gathered that, despite a long-drawn controversy over the teams to be promoted from the lower cadre division, Nigerian National League (NNL), Dikko insists the top-flight will resume next weekend.
Dikko also noted hic-cups affecting the NNL’s Super 8 play-off contest, but stressed that nothing will prevent the NPFL from starting as fixed for the second Sunday in 2019.
Dikko affirmed that the NNL play-offs would not affect the LMC’s plans to start the top-flight league on January 13.
The second vice-president of Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) added: “The NNL have made their plans. I think they want to start on January 5th to finish on January 8th or 9th.
“They said because of the holidays they are giving the teams time to arrive. Everything around that end is being sorted.
“It will not affect the start date of the new NPFL season. We will get it done and we can start the league.
“We have learnt our lessons from what happened in 2018 and we will see how we can avoid the mistakes going farther.
“A lot of crises happened last year but everything is coming back to normal. We will learn these lessons and build going forward.
“There are a lot of things that need to be done, to make the league better. We need to focus on those issues.
“We hope everything will turn out as planned and at the end of the day, all these crises will be for the best.”
