CAF/FIFA Referees Fitness Instructor, Assistant Commissioner
of Police, Felix Kigigha has told the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, coach
Stephen Keshi and his technical assistants to accept responsibility for Nigeria’s failure to qualify for the 2015
African Cup of Nations in Equatorial
Guinea next year. Speaking to Vanguard
Sports, Kigigha, who described the Eagles performance in the qualifying series
as unacceptable and lamentable, said despite warnings by concerned Nigerians as
himself, Felix Owolabi and fans, NFF members rather agreed not to work for
national interest but engaged in self aggrandizement. “Some of us voiced our
observations about defects and problems of the national team. NFF failed to
plan, that both NFF leadership and Stephen Keshi had approached the whole issue
in a nonchalant manner and this flowed down to the players. In fact, our
problem started soon after the World Cup in Brazil. There was no post- mortem
of our participation in that competition which would have given us a direction,
what to do and amount of resources to marshal out.”
“But those in administration acted as if Nigeria was Brazil,
Germany and Argentina and others fused into a team that is
invincible in Africa which of course we are
not. I am really blaming them because when they had enough time to put things
right, they rather were more concerned in getting elected into office. The
Stephen Keshi facto was there too. He did not act as a professional all the
time. So I knew that given earlier results in the qualifiers, even if we had beaten
South Africa, it was only due to respect for us not about superiority.”
Asked what needed to be done now to push the game up, ACP Kigigha
said “that still boils down to NFF to give us a football road map and this must
contain every aspect of developing ant promotion of the game. If they do that
as a priority, then we can talk of qualifying for the next AFCON and may World Cup”
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