The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) on Monday released a statement it said is “to clear a lot of falsehood that has been making the rounds in sections of the media” following the resignation of Sunday Oliseh as Super Eagles coach last week.
In a lengthy statement, the NFF revealed that prior to the former national skipper’s appointment, “it went through a meeting between himself (Oliseh) and the Technical Committee and was ultimately approved by the entire Executive Committee of the NFF”.
The bumbling association said it went ahead with the recruitment despite “misgivings about his temperament (he himself alluded to this at his unveiling) he was seen as a bright young Coach able to take the Super Eagles to new heights”.
In order to encourage him and enhance better working condition, “the NFF proceeded to pay him three months’ salary in advance – something that had never happened previously in Nigeria football” and “introduced him to our principal partners/sponsors in order to show that the Federation had total regard”.
Apart from the aforementioned, “The NFF also purchased for Mr. Oliseh a brand new car to ease his movement locally whenever he was in Nigeria”.
In the area of choice of players, match venues and training camps, the NFF revealed that “not only have his requests and choice of training camps been accepted, his choice of players have never been interfered with, his choice of venues have all but once”.
The football body also disclosed that despite financial crises, “the NFF acceded to Coach Oliseh’s insistence on camping the CHAN team in South Africa. His show of appreciation was to go on air to talk about spending his money to buy food for the team in South Africa. Coach Oliseh opted to buy Nigerian food for the players on two (2) occasions, without alerting the NFF or the hotel management. Food meant for the team on those two occasions went to waste”.
After the CHAN championships in Rwanda, the NFF Technical Committee requested for the usual technical report of the championship but “Coach Oliseh wrote a terse email back to the secretary of that committee stating that he did not report to them”.
On his continuous absence from Nigeria, the NFF said: “By the terms of his contract he was obliged to return to Nigeria at least two weeks to any Super Eagles match and is obliged to watch our domestic league matches from time to time, one can count how many local league matches he has watched and one can point out that he did not return to Nigeria before he went to the CHAN championship on the grounds that he was ill. Yet, he went to South Africa and Rwanda but did not return with the team to Nigeria.”
The NFF questioned the 41-year-old managerial style which led to the retirement of Vincent Enyeama and his demands to sack the entire backroom staff of the team.
“He went on air to insult Nigerians in what is now known as his ‘YouTube rant’ wherein he made serious allegations against the Nigeria media, which he has failed to substantiate,” the NFF queried.
“In it, he also noted that he didn’t want the job of the Super Eagles Chief Coach but was prevailed upon to accept it.”
From the foregoing, the NFF said, “it is clear that without claiming to be perfect and working under considerable financial difficulties, not only did the NFF support Mr. Sunday Oliseh in his capacity as Chief Coach of Super Eagles, it actually showed lots of restraint in the face of aggravated impulsive behaviour by the coach bordering in some cases on insubordination.”
As reported by Qed.ng, the NFF pointed out that Oliseh collected his salary arrears before throwing in the towel.
“We find it strange though that, after complaints of non -payment, Mr. Oliseh waited to receive monies owed him before resigning. Two days before his resignation, he had passionately appealed that we unite as one force to fight the battle on the football field with the Egyptian national team. We had no idea he was selling a dummy.”
But Oliseh has responded to the latest declarations of the Amaju Pinnick-led crew through head of his legal team, Robert Emuekperuo, giving the NFF 48 hours to retract their accusations.
He denied receiving any form of payment as claimed by the NFF and said he is shocked by claims he insulted Nigerians.
