By Victor Enyinnaya, Lagos on April 11, 2016

Ex-international Moses Kpakor has called on the leadership of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) to do a thorough home work this time around and come up with a lasting solution that would arrest the fast decline of the country’s football fortunes.

According to him, it is incumbent on the NFF to look more inwards than scratching the surface again. He declared that the major problem of the game in the country is not the non-hiring of a foreign coach, stressing that there are more teething hurdles to scale than technical matters.

Said Kpakor: “The structures are faulty and do not give room for smooth operation as it should be. The NFF itself is also a major problem of the sport. There are more hiccups in the game than what we see on the surface. The system is not working because of the rules that were deliberately put in place. It will be foolhardy to rush into engaging a foreign hand without clearing the garbage purposely acting as a clog on the wheel of progress of the game. Amaju knew them and pretending that the main trouble of our football is coaching leaves a sour taste in the in mouth.”

The former international star midfielder emphatically threw his weight behind the conditions the Sports and Youth Minister Solomon Dalung gave to the NFF on the foreign coach option. He posited that the issue of expatriate technical hand has remained a contentious one in the recent history of Nigerian football due to sharp practices, intrigues and other high wire personal and group interests that go with it. Kpakor noted that at the end of the day the white man would not perform, therefore his contract would be terminated and he would run to the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS), which would adjudicate in his favour and Nigeria would have no alternative than to comply by paying all his outstanding demands.

“We must think deeply twice before going into this trap again,” Kpakor said. “It is my belief that the needed progress of the game in the land is not in the hands of our foreign counterparts. The bitter home truth remains that the indigenous coaches are at a disadvantage and, if you like, at the mercy of the often high-handed executive committee of the NFF. If you want to say ‘no, this is how this and that should be’ you become a prawn in their ferrying pan. They gang up against you and there and then plot your downfall. These are some of the areas that have retarded the upward movement of the game here. They don’t give local coaches the free hand to operate. It is part of the bane of the sport. There are more daring issues than this rush for foreign coach. We must know the fact that the major attraction on this foreign coach stuff is the commission for all those that aided his employment and once that is done, what has been responsible for the downward trend of the game would continue unabated.”

The former defunct BCC Lions of Gboko key player remarked that some of the issues Sunday Oliseh raised are not being looked at but have been swept under the carpet as the NFF leadership pretends as if nothing drastic happened to Nigeria’s game. “This avoidable mistake that led to yet another absence of the country from AFCON ought to be squarely addressed and culprits made public. But the reverse is the case here. This kind of atmosphere cannot provide an enabling environment for investors to sponsor the sport. They would as usual see the administrators as a bunch of jesters and clappers, a situation that has worsened the plight of Nigerians to see a thoroughbred administration of the money-spinning sport,” Kpakor stated.

•Photo shows ex-international Moses Kpakor.

Source Daily Sports

Posted April 11, 2016

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