Stephen Keshi And NFF Saga: What Exactly Is Going On?

The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has written to erst­while Super Eagles head coach, Stephen Keshi, to warn him to either sign the contract document given to him within one week or forget about coaching the team.

The President of the football federation, Mr. Pinnick Amaju, who said this while informing the Senate Committee on Sports on the situation concerning Keshi’s lingering contract, pointed out that though the federation had given Keshi the contract document to study and get back to them within few days.

The Glass House had to write a reminder letter to him last week giving him 10 days to respond or forfeit the contract.

In his words: “When I got elected, I went through lots of documents at the federation and found out that coaches are employed without sorting out some issues.

“I therefore ensured that all the committees that have anything to do with the employment of a coach, from the legal to the technical commit­tee of the federation, and because we don’t want is­sues after a coach has been employed, we ensure the contract document given to Keshi is a compendium.

“Again, taking into cog­nizance of the economic realities in the country, it took us a couple of time to finalise the document, however, we want to assure you that it will be sorted out very soon. In terms of finance, we offered him N5 million monthly salary, with some other benefits.

“The contract has been forwarded to him about a week ago although we heard certain things in the media, we however, be­lieve in official correspon­dent with Keshi. Up till this moment, we have not received any official response or correspondence from Keshi.

“Since he called to in­form me that he was trav­eling, I directed the secre­tariat on Wednesday last week, to write a reminder letter to him to confirm his decision on the contract within 10 days to enable the team resume camping next (this) week for the two international friendly matches against Bolivia and South Africa.

“I want to assure this distinguished senate com­mittee that within 10 days, we should be able to make a pronouncement on this matter after given him time to study the contract. That is exactly what we are waiting for,” he noted.

But the interesting thing is on keshi's part, he denied reports of been offered a new deal by the Nigeria Football Federation insisting he has not been approached by the Nigeria Football Federation.

NFF Technical committee head Felix Anyasi told newsmen two days back that his committee approached Keshi and offered him a new job but the 52 year old says he is yet to hear from anybody about a new contract.

“Nobody has called me about any meeting or anything about a contract,” Keshi was quoted by SportingLife.

“I am not aware of anything of the sort. And no one has spoken to me about a renewal of a contract.

“Up to now, no one has called me. Maybe later or tomorrow but for now, nobody has called for any contract talks,”he said.

To this end I think I should ask again "Who is fooling who? and when will this saga end?

Personally I believe by now keshi should have been past tense as regarding our football by now considering his results and performances in his last outing with the Super Eagles .

Why will someone make our football national team inactive with with his arrogant looking nature and stubborn attitude. I believe its high time we look beyond keshi and select from the best of coaches spread around the world.

I really don't understand why we still celebrate failure? Siasia was sacked after he failed to qualify the country for the 2013 Nations Cup.

Keshi was given all the support even more than Siasia, yet he failed to qualify the country for Afcon 2015. So I don’t see any reason why NFF should be talking about giving Keshi another contract.

Our national team needs revival in every aspects and the earlier in taking this decision to revive our darling super eagles to its glory days the better.

Going back to appoint keshi and giving him a new contract is like a "dog going back to eat its vomit" We need a serious CHANGE in our tactical play, formation, style, appoach as a footballing nation,to be candid keshi has done more harm than good to our team.

No definite pattern of play since he took over up till his last game against south africa; and we still want that same man to come back and continue the unimpressive trend.

 NFF has got to act fast on this issue before its too late considering our upcoming matches and by we making good use of the Fifa free calender period for friendly matches.

Written by:Gbanks