SAN FRANCISCO, June 16, (THEWILL) – The Nigeria Football Federation has condemned the recent bribery allegation rocking the national team describing it as a global embarrassment to the country.
The General Secretary of the NFF, Dr Mohammed Sanisu, stated this while speaking to SportingSun in Abuja on Tuesday. He said the NFF is awaiting formal complaints and petitions from the players who made the allegations adding that the allegations were disturbing because it implicated dead officials.
He said: “I can tell you that I am not happy over the allegation for two reasons. Firstly, they failed to talk when they were approached in the past and, again, it is painful that some of these accusations are directed at people that are no longer alive.
“Why did they not make the allegations when those people were still alive? The ugliest side of the allegation is that they have given the country a bad name.
“I am not saying that it is not their right to expose incidents if they actually happened; but my concern is that they should [have] been civilised in the way they went about it. They should not forget that there are proper channels of addressing such issues. I have not seen anybody who brought the issue of such magnitude before the federation and we fail to take action.
“Avenues have also been created in the past to handle such issues, but it is unfortunate that the players went public instead of exploring that window. Why did they decide to go public just to get cheap popularity? They forgot that they are tarnishing the image of the country.”
Asked if the NFF will take any action against the players that made the allegation, Dr Sanusi said: “I won’t confirm to you authoritatively whether the federation will set up a committee to look into it for now because I am only an implementer of what the board of the federation directed.
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“Again, and more importantly, the federation needs something more concrete to work with instead of relying on allegations made in the media. If any of them had written to complain, we will definitely take it up.
“There must be an official complaint before the federation can act. I will be very happy to receive an official complaint instead of the information on the media. Going public does not speak well of those aggrieved, it rather tarnishes the image of the country.”
THEWILL reports that some former Super Eagles players like Chinedu Obasi Ogbuke and Brown Ideye, had alleged misconduct against deceased former coaches of the Super Eagles, Stephen Keshi and Amodu Shauibu.
