In response to the widely shared photo of an EPL-customized match ball on the ball dais during the match officials and players filing out of the tunnel for the NPFL Matchday 17 encounter in Uyo, the Dakkada Football Club of Uyo has responded.

The NPFL team stated in a press release released on Tuesday night by Mr. Edidiong Stephen, the club’s media manager, that a ball boy placed the EPL ball without the proper authorization, which resulted in an error.

Referee Ayeni Ridwan, however, remedied this mistake prior to kickoff; this action was not acknowledged in the understandable but regrettable debates over the incident.

According to the press release.

“APPLICATION OF EPL MATCH BALL: PRESS RELEASE”

We’ve seen how popular a screenshot of the first few minutes of the video clips from the matchday seventeen match between Dakkada and Enyimba, which took place in Uyo on Sunday, March 6, has been on social media lately.
The aforementioned screenshot seems to have been taken while referee Ayeni Ridwan was leading a procession of the two teams of players out of the tunnel and onto the pitch, right before he lifted the match ball from the ball dais.

The match ball in the screenshot is an English Premier League (EPL) match ball, which has caused a lot of controversy despite being regrettably and understandably unfit for a Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) game.
We would like to elaborate on the issue more in the following ways in order to provide clarification and correct any misinformation:

1. That a ball boy quickly put the aforementioned ball—which was one of our training balls and was located among the balls in our ball bag—on the ball dias without permission.
2. The referee called for a change of the match ball as soon as he saw the mistake on the field.
3. The alternate screenshot, which was captured at kickoff and is given herewith, shows that the ball that was ultimately used for the match was not the same as the EPL match ball that was mentioned earlier.

But we fully accept responsibility for this mistake, and we sincerely regret for any embarrassment this has caused to the League Management Company (LMC) and all other relevant parties involved in our domestic game.

While we have been informed that official match balls for this season are on their way to all twenty NPFL clubs, we also wish to appeal to all parties involved to refrain from further stoking the fire and to fully align with the modest efforts to develop and promote the NPFL of the Shehu Dikko-led LMC, which had appeared to be using both the CAF Confederations Cup and the UEFA Champions League match balls elsewhere. Some of these images appear to have been photoshopped.