Not surprising, Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) President Amaju Pinnick, as a guest of Nigeria’s leading sports television programme ‘The Sports Parliament’, has stated clearly that his administration’s focus and top priority is the Super Eagles and not the development of Nigeria football.
Probed with further questions whether or not the Super Eagles of Nigeria will qualify for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, Pinnick rather took his audience on an endless Journey of profiling the chances of other African countries like Cameron, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Ghana etc and eventually could not assure Nigerians whether or not the Super Eagles will qualify for Qatar 2022 World.
Pinnick had claimed in the past in self-glorification that the NFF have attained 65% self-funding under his watch.
Despite of the constant statutory allocation from the federation’s account to the NFF, he could not guarantee the Super Eagles qualification for next year’s World Cup.
Previous administrations of the NFF who had a single funding source from the federation’s account made it almost a routine for Nigeria’s qualification with exception of the 2006 World Cup in Germany.
Pinnick stoutly defended the consistent poor performance of coach Gernot Rohr, who one of the panel members described as “a complete failure”.
At the end of the leading sports programme Nigerians who hooked up due to massive publicity by the speaker of the Parliament and ex-international Segun ‘Mathematical’ Odegbami were completely disappointed that there was nothing to take home as the NFF president spoke at variance with questions put to him and deliberately evaded most of the questions Nigerians were waiting for answers.
BY HARRISON JALLA