Sunday Oliseh, Amaju Pinnick’s golden boy, with the golden touch, to make the Super Eagles golden again, has sensationally chickened out! Was that an unforeseen glitch or accident waiting to happen?
The exit of Stephen Keshi and entrance of Sunday Oliseh, was akin to the fecundity challenge of the hen and the fowl in a Yoruba saying. The hen produced 20 eggs and hatched all 20. Yet the owner angrily solid it off, for alleged barrenness. Instead, he bought a fowl. But the new darling produced only six eggs, hatching only one!
With all the hype surrounding Oliseh’s arrival, Guardiola of Africa, et al, it can only surprise the gullible that everything has ended a damp squib. But that doesn’t mitigate the catastrophe: on the virtual eve of a crucial Nations Cup qualifier back-to-back with Egypt, the coaching camp is in disarray.
Now, Keshi with all his troubles, chalked up modest achievements, among which was an African Nations Cup (AFCON) win from virtual nowhere. Yeah, many times, he didn’t play great. But at least, he could boast a bragging right as AFCON winner.
Pray, what could Oliseh brag about? Presiding over the dumping of Nigeria, in the opening rounds, in the second-tier Championship of African Nations (CHAN) in Rwanda, a tournament in which the “very bad” Keshi even won a bronze!
When Oliseh came, people who knew football pointed at his lack of managerial experience (never even coached a top league club side before, or even any of Nigeria’s age-grade teams); and his fearsome temper, which makes him rude and insufferable most of the time. What Amaju Pinnick’s Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) and their spin ensemble could mouth was the all-conquering Guardiola of Africa, that needn’t national team training experience before excelling! Now, we know better!
But even worse: Hurricane Oliseh was some glorious undertaker of a sort, at least with some senior players. Vincent Enyeama, one of Nigeria’s best goalkeepers ever, walked out on the national team simply because Oliseh would play the brusque boss over team captaincy. It is a scandal that one of the best goalkeepers in France’s Ligue One is unavailable for selection in a key Nations Cup eliminator. His replacement? Another of Oliseh’s golden rookies from the English second-tier!
Another, Emmanuel Emenike, Nigeria’s top striker at the AFCON win, took a jump before he was pushed. He was afraid, perhaps, Oliseh would sack him if he didn’t sack himself early enough!
The long and short? Nigerian football is back to square one. Does that say anything about the quality of decision making in Nigeria’s public space? And what’s this umpteenth intransigence about the inviolability of decisions, even if they appear, as in Oliseh’s appointment, patently wrong and not well thought through?
Still, with all of Oliseh’s faults, nothing excuses NFF for not fulfilling the terms of his contract, as the coach claimed. It’s really a scandal: coaches being owed salaries, Oliseh’s accommodation deal remaining a mirage, and even his hand-picked assistant “begging” for his salary to attend to his health!
Contract terms brouhaha has always been part of NFF’s narrative, right from its time as NFA. Even if Oliseh proved a pig in a poke, the contract disputes that rationalised his premature exit was also part of the reasons for Keshi’s sack.
So, when will the NFF get real, given the almost spiritual plane football occupies in the lives of stressed and longsuffering Nigerians?
