In a video released yesterday by the Nigeria Football Federation on their website and YouTube channel, NFF president Amaju Pinnick addressed the ongoing drama between the NFF and coach Sunday Oliseh. He asked Nigerians to forgive Oliseh for his outbursts and move on so the country could qualify for the next African Nations Cup. What he said after the cut..
“Actually we received a letter from Mr Sunday Oliseh apologizing for his outburst,which to us was quite reckless ,quite unnecessary and rather very unfortunate.” Pinnick started
”But a lot of people are hurt, a lot of people are upset about his outburst,which we feel is a major distraction considering the fact we have a major two-header against Egypt ,one of the top teams in Africa.”
”You know,it’s not just seeing a letter of apology and accepting,now we need to make some repairs,some investments,we need to talk to some stakeholders that were directly or indirectly affected by his rantings for example SWAN,SWAN are very mad,Swan has been a major platform for building football and sports generally in Nigeria. And of course,FIFA itself rates SWAN very highly.”
”We need to appeal to SWAN, we need to appeal to their conscience to make them understand that it is all about Nigeria,now after SWAN we also need to appeal to the technical committee ,the technical committee they’ve done a very thorough job,they wrote a simple letter requesting for a report and his response was appalling.”
”They feel so slighted, they feel so hurt and of course even betrayed by us. Look at the calibre of people in the technical committee, we have Mutiu Adepoju,Christian Chukwu, Victor Ikpeba, Danladi,you have fresh as the vice Chairman,you have my brother Green,you have Shuaibu Amodu, This are people that have contributed immensely to the development of the game on and off the field of play.”
”So We have to appeal to them,we need to appeal to a lot of people,we need to appeal to members of the Nigerian Football Federation,we need to appeal to the backroom staff that were called names,a lot of people, once we finish appealing to them and we see that few nerves have been calmed then we can now look at , we also need to appeal to the ministry, we need to appeal to the honourable minister, because if you abuse the Nigerian Football Federation, you’re also abusing the Nigerian Government because we are an arm of the Nigerian government we are tied to their apron strings whether you like it or not. We need to appeal to our sponsors. So that’s the kind of dilemma that we are in right now”