After the shame in Namibia when Eagles refused to fly to Brazil for the Confederation Cup over allowances, the Federal Government set up a panel to investigate the incident. The panel, headed by one time Presidential spokesman Segun Adeniyi, was, among other things, to recommend ways to avoid future occurrence. They recommended a Code Of Conduct that was meant to regulate the conduct of players in camp.
It also rules that players must be informed of their entitlements before joining camps and they must agree to the terms in camp before they can be part of the team for any competition or match. Any player not satisfied with the terms would be free to leave the camp. It is to guide against players making increased demands midway into a tournament as they had done in the past. It also emphasizes strongly on the rights of players which the federation MUST respect.
Failure to implement the report probably led to another shame in Brazil during the 2014 World Cup when players demanded for allowances from fifa grants that had not even been paid to the federation. The crisis affected Nigeria’s performance. Now, the Amaju Pinnick-led federation wants to implement the Code Of Conduct to ensure discipline in Eagles. Amaju spoke on this and on other issues about football. Excerpts:
It’s been some months since you started heading Nigerian football, where are we actually headed?
Pinnick
We are trying to build a culture of sustainable football and I believe we are right on course. Before we even got elected, we had studied and knew a lot of factors that will enable us achieve our goal. I’m principally looking at building structures that will attract corporate Nigerians to the fold of the football federation. One of the things that we did was getting companies with very high reputation to act as management and financial consultants to us.
Getting these companies has given us a leeway in terms of trying to have an appreciable level of financial independence and at the end of our tenure we hope to achieve about 80% or 100%. Beyond that, we also needed to build capacity for our football administrators, referees, coaches …. because we discovered that there’s a high level of ineptitude and lack of knowledge in terms of the modern day science of football.
We’ve been able to achieve that to an appreciable level. We’ve trained about 30 referees and about 20 coaches. We also acquired the pro-zone software used for analysing games. We acquired all these through private sponsorship which we secured short term and a lot of companies have sympathy for our goal.
So far, we believe we are doing the right thing and even though we lost at the under-20 level, we saw that those boys are some of the brightest and best brains when it comes to football and they’ll eventually make our country proud in the future. We’re coming out with a plan which we don’t want to unveil now. We have seen that there is a high level of technical ineptitude in the game.
One thing we lack generally is technical input from the bench which has impacted negatively in our games, but the talents (players) are limitless in this country. We are doing something in that direction and that’s why we said the former administration believed so much in doing things magically and that’s why they had many results.
Our administration is to combine their magic with our science. For the past eight months, we’ve been able to do that. We want to harness and introduce science into games by doing things that are radically different, which we will unveil to Nigerians in the second week of July.
So far, you have made a great impact in terms of corporate image, but are you comfortable with the coaches, the results, the game itself?
The good news right now is that we have a good technical director (Amodu Shuaibu) who has seen it all in terms of coaching and managing players. He’s someone we rely on and I speak with him daily. We’ll put on our thinking caps and come out with a good solution – Myself, the Vice-President and the second Vice-President. We feel that our goal is not just winning but creating that culture of sustainable football development.
We want to win for Nigerians to be happy, but there are various goals to win; One is physically winning and lifting a trophy and another winning is creating a future talent base for Nigeria which, to me, is more important. We don’t just want to train players alone, we also want to train coaches. They have to be I.T compliant. They should know the modern technique and rudiment in coaching.
We are coming out with a comprehensive programme on that, so that it can impact in the various clubs. Football in Nigeria is a very tough and difficult call, people are very passionate about it and that’s why we’ve been having sleepless nights so as to make sure that we do not fail Nigerians, who have placed confidence in us. We will get to the promise land prayerfully and with dedication and support from everyone especially the media.
Personally, the media played a major role in enhancing whatever I am today. I have very huge respect for them. But beyond that, we also believe that criticism should be instructive, constructive and scientific. It should not be borne out of deep-seated emotional hatred.
It shouldn’t be subjective or based on sentiments because at the end of the day, we are trying to emphasize and develop Nigerian football. We are in a very modern scientific world so whatever you say is captured by Google. We should be guided by a modicum of philosophy to see that we regulate what we say, because whatever we say impacts on us.
How far are you utilizing your contacts to help Nigerian football?
ready to go … Flying Eagles players celebrate in one of their matches at the last African Youth Championship. Flying Eagles are set to take on the World at the FIFA U-20 Championship in New Zealand.
A lot of people are beginning to appreciate us because we are trying to be global. We are proud to be Nigerians and we’ve decided to take leadership the same way we are taking leadership in the political front in Africa. We’ve always acted as a big brother to most African countries.
Even in Zurich, though I wasn’t the oldest person, somehow people believe that when a Nigerian speaks, everybody listens. Now we are getting a lot of recognition. I believe this is the first time in a very long time that we are having that kind of global recognition in football, off the field of play.
There’s ongoing controversy in world football and it’s centred on corruption in fifa and the next two World Cups. How fair and how far will these affect the 2018 and 2022 World Cups in Russia and Qatar respectively?
I don’t want to speak about that if you don’t mind, because to me all those are subject to investigation which of course could lead to criminal proceedings. But in my personal opinion, I just think they should allow things be the way they are, because people took extreme positions that’s why all these investigations are on.
On the other end, they should also realise that extreme positions can be taken, for instance, Asia can decide to pull out of the World Cup if Qatar is being threatened. Other sympathizers may follow and that will not be good for world football. I just feel there are other years to come; there’s 2026, 2030, 2034 and so on.
The world is not ending today by God’s grace. I respect the US Justice Department because whatever they are doing today will impact positively and bring a lot of integrity and sanity into football and also the Swiss Investigative Agency. I have a very huge respect for them. We don’t believe in corruption and we shouldn’t be an apostle of corruption anywhere in the world.
I heard you talk about the need to bring back discipline to the National team?
We are not going to relent on bringing discipline to the National team because we observed that there’s a lot of indiscipline, unnecessary arrogance and high-handedness in the team. You can’t be in charge with all these in place. We got elected by the people to run football, so we are definitely going to be in charge and we are going make them see that there are rules.
For instance, anytime we invite players in the future, as soon as they arrive, they’ll be given the Code of Conduct to sign, so as to moderate and regulate their behaviour and utterances. We believe we pay the piper and so we should dictate the tune. Whatever comments they make impact hugely on us. I can’t tell you how much money we spent when Vincent made that comment (that Kaduna was not safe to host an international match involving Eagles).
It heightened the tension and we needed to arrest the situation by introducing a lot of policing and security measures, because security issues are not what you divulge. We are happy Kaduna was home to all, very peaceful. Even when the Eagles were struggling, their fans in Kaduna gave them total support.
I want to use this opportunity to thank the people of Kaduna and the Governor who was there from the beginning to end and cheered the Super Eagles. We know they’ve not gotten to where we want them to, but we will support the technical crew in making sure they realise their dream of repositioning Nigeria to be one of the best Football nations in the world. That’s our ultimate dream.
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