ABUJA, Nigeria -- The Nigeria national team bus was hurriedly driven away from the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport on their arrival from Zambia after a gun was fired into the air early on Monday morning.
Two unidentified men in plainclothes claiming to be police officers were waiting at the airport for Nigeria to return home late Sunday night after the 2-1 World Cup qualifying win at Zambia.
The men said they were under instructions to arrest Shehu Dikko, the Nigeria Football Federation's second vice president and chairman of Nigeria's league organising body League Manangement Company, on the orders of the Abuja police commissioner.
NFF executive committee members, team officials and media members resisted the attempt to abduct the LMC chairman, demanding to see a warrant and identification.
Neither man produced documentation, and when reporters started taking photographs, one of the men drew a gun and pointed it at journalist Kelvin Omuojine before discharging the weapon in the air.
The gunshot forced officials to scramble Super Eagles players into their team bus, which was hurriedly driven away from the airport.
The abduction attempt comes after a contempt of court order issued by Justice I Kundah of the Jos High Court, against which the LMC has successfully appealed and received a stay from the higher Court of Appeal.
At that hearing, barrister Habila Adzard, representing the other party to the case, claimed ignorance of any attempt to enforce any court order and gave an undertaking that his clients will not attempt to tamper with the subject matter of the appeal by acting to enforce any such order, pending the hearing of the case by the Court of Appeal.
In addition, Nigeria's inspector general of police had issued a directive to stay all actions pending final determination of the suit, for which a hearing is expected on Tuesday.
Dikko told ESPN FC that the commissioner has already assigned police to protect him.
"I have eight policemen attached to my house and others attached to my personal office, all by the Abuja commissioner of police under the instruction of the inspector general of police," he said.
"So I wonder if the [commissioner] wants to see me as these men claimed, [why] he couldn't just ask the police he deployed to protect me to invite me to see him?"