Amaju Pinnick, president of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has revealed that the lawsuit former coach of the Super Eagles, Stephen Keshi served the governing body is not a distraction.
Speaking to OMGDAILYUPDATE.BLOGSPOT.COM sports, Pinnick also revealed that the NFF is taking steps to ensure that clubs who are unable to pay playing and non-playing staff salaries will be taken care of on administrative terms.
NFF President Amaju Pinnick
Pinnick also debunked rumours that the football governing body has an agreement with a foreign company to pay the salaries of new coach, Sunday Oliseh and his assistant coaches.
Read the full transcript of the interview below:
What plan does the Federation have in engaging the Eagles in every free FIFA Window, can we have an insight into the countries lined up?
We are working with our agents and we are taking all the opportunity available in free FIFA windows and I can tell you that we are not going to leave any window vacant because we cannot divulge all the information, because, the ones that we divulge almost cost us playing England.
We said October might be free let us see how we can play, and a lot of things you divulge has even caused us some sponsored arrangements, and you know when they start seeing things happen, they will know that, we are actually acting differently.
Are you disturbed by the slide in Nigeria FIFA Rankings
Fall in FIFA rankings, naturally everyone will be disturbed because, the more you go down the less attractive you are and we are thinking of bouncing back and i hope when we beat Tanzania and Niger and it will help us and we will move up under our new coach and, my dream is to see Nigeria within the last 2o brackets which is of course achievable.
Is the NFF not worried about some clubs inability to pay salaries to players and officials?
Everything we are doing is a process, there is a players status committee and they have made their recommendations and we will look at it and take a portion on that. Workers have to be paid their wages, we will see how these clubs can be getting their own identities. and we are working on that direction.
What is your stand on players with Nigerian heritage? Can they be considered?
We have a coach who is very seasoned and also, we want to align and take responsibilities, and we already said we will not interfere into his selection process, we can only align and make it better so whatever he does he takes his responsibility. We are professionals and we want to stick with professionalism
Keshi’s letter from the lawyers don’t you think it will be a distraction to the federation?
It is not a distraction, it is just one of those things, we have sent it to our legal committee and we have seen it accordingly and we don’t want to be drawn back and we are looking to stay focused. I am a sports administrator and I lead Nigerian football if your are running 100mtrs and once they say, on your mark, set go, you don’t tend to look back because, if you look back you will slow your race or you will fall and not get to your destination, rather we want to make Nigerians happy.
There have been a lot of walkovers in the womens’ league, is the NFF worried?
It is the same thing those clubs that said, instead of their sister club, they pay attention to others, Nigerians should always commend the NFF for taking care of 11 National Teams, it is the same thing, because there are some countries that concentrate on a major team, but we are doing that because of our size and potential. We don’t have money.
We need money to pay for a lot of things and its not easy and we came at a point when there is transition in Nigeria, we want to do things right.
You were quoted in some aspects of the newspapers that a UK company will pay the salaries of Oliseh and his assistants, when will this happen?
We said, we had a meeting in London and the company wants to see Oliseh, it is a Nigerian Company and soon Nigerians will see them, it is a Nigerian Company that has a branch in London and they are talking about the terms of payment and if they agree and by next (this) week they will see what we are going to do, but it is not a foreign company, whats their interest, so it is a Nigerian company based in London.
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