The former Super Eagles captain and midfielder still feels angry at the
way he left the coaching role of the Super Eagles in February and the
negative perception Nigerian football lovers have of him and has now
blasted the NFF president Amaju Pinnick , executive committee member
Christopher Green and players like Mikel Obi and Vincent Enyeama. ballistic
In a long revealing article written on his website Sundayoliseh.tv
and titled โMy Recent Near Death Experience As Coach Of Nigeria,’ the
FIFA technical committee member said his mind in it’s entirety. Very
revealing! Read more after the cut.
โOne day whilst coaching the super Eagles in Abuja stadium prior to the
Burkina Faso game I all of a sudden felt dizziness, light headedness,
headache and could barely stand,โ Oliseh narrated. โI managed to finish
the session before calling on the doctor into my room who was clueless
to what was happening.
โFrom then on it was sleepless nights, loss of appetite, high blood pressure and before I knew it I started losing weight.
โAfter several visits to doctors abroad nothing was found though the
doctors found anomalies they couldnโt pin point the actual illness to.
โPrior to the away trip to Burkina Faso for the final CHAN qualifier
game in Port Harcourt after lunch I was struck with the worst feat of
this illness again. Could not walk, talk, dizzy and felt like I was
going to pass out.
โI quickly demanded to be rushed to the airport and with the evening
flight travelled to Germany to see specialists .After 2 days of nonstop
tests I was diagnosed to have narrowly escaped a total collapse in
Nigeria.
โFor weeks I was bed ridden, lost 7 kilos and could barely walk 5 metres
without sitting down. My family was petrified and all feared the worst.
One thing was for sure though: had I not taking that evening flight to
Germany when I did, there was a strong possibility of a far worse
outcome. Thank God for his mercies.
โAll through the last 4 months of my tenure as coach I was far from my
complete healthy self and coached the team and stayed in my bedroom.
Often on my bed or sofa.
โImagine how betrayed and pained I must have felt with the lack of
support at these life threatening times from my employers the NFF and
the shady pressmen who made it a duty not to report the gravity of the
illnesses that befell me and my assistant to the Nigerian people and
kind of like wished us the worst!
โOn the day I put in my resignation letter I was still far from my best
health wise and I guess it is better staying alive than getting
embroiled with these people who have no interest of Nigeria at heart.โ
Oliseh added: โA day after the Late Stephen Keshi was relieved of his
duties as coach of the Super Eagles of Nigeria, I got a phone call from
the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) offering me the job which I
immediately rejected. The call lasted just 2 minutes!
โI was to further refuse the offer twice again in the next 2 days that
followed as they kept on calling. Their argument: With the new president
Muhammadu Buhari in place, the Nff was ready for a change and was
abandoning their old โShadyโ ways!
โIt took the intervention of a phone call from a highly ranked federal
government official for me to budge. His point was simple โyour country
is in dire need of your services and the NFF promised me a change, put
your terms in writing and if they do not accept it, let them go
elsewhereโ.
โWhich is what I did and we all eventually signed a working agreement.
Thus began the adventure to coach the Super Eagles of Nigeria. Sometimes
I wish I stood my grounds and refused their offer, but I guess the urge
to help my country was just too much to ignore.โ
Oliseh, then narrated how he and players Enyeama, Mikel and Victor Moses
got off on the wrong foot and how Mikel snubbed his messages.
He wrote: โMy first official act was to call the team Captain Vincent
Enyeama (Lille OSC, France) to rub minds and fix an appointment to see
him. Same act was accorded to John Obi Mikel and Victor Moses of
Chelsea. All except for Obi Mikel picked up my call and Mikel even
ignored my eventual sms.
โSpent a lovely day at Lille with Enyeama, took him to lunch and shared
my Philosophy with him and he seemed genuinely inspired to work together
but kept on talking about pending retirement which we agreed he would
shelve aside till after AFCON 2017 at least.
โWent to London to see Mikel & Moses but could only see Moses as
Mikel did not reply my calls & we could not get a hold of him.
โMoses came 2 ยฝ half hours late to our meeting but none the less we had a
productive talk in company of my assistant, Jean Francois Losciuto.
โThree weeks to my first official game in charge of the Super Eagles, vs
Tanzania, and the invitations were sent out to the clubs, 2 weeks to
the game Victor Moses opted out citing fear of contracting an injury
whilst playing for Nigeria in favour of his club via a written letter to
the Team manager of the super eagles.
โMost players reported to camp on Monday prior to the Tanzania game,
Vincent Enyeama was supposed to fly in Tuesday Morning, only for me to
be surprisingly informed via sms that he was skipping the game because
he lost the mum some weeks earlier.
โI called him up and made an agreement with him, as I needed not only my
captain and such a good goalkeeper for my opening game, that if he came
for the game on Friday I would release him to go to the village after
the game and skip the friendly game versus Niger scheduled for 3 days
later after the Tanzania encounter, which he agreed.
โThe team was scheduled to fly out on Thursday. On Wednesday afternoon
Enyeama called to say he was not coming for the game, definitively.
โI was shocked as we had an agreement, we needed his experience,
leadership and I was aware he was yet to miss a training session for his
club side talk less of a league game.
โAs faith will have it, with a brand new team that trained only for two
days we were able to come out of the Tanzania game with a point and my
newly discovered and talented goalkeeper, Carl Ikeme of Wolverhampton
was the man of the match. A 2-0 resounding victory over Niger 3 days
later gave a successful look to the first camping but cast questions on
if we could count on the three above named players to help us proceed. I
chose to build alternatives!โ
โOn the day I was unveiled, the very vocal president of the NFF, Amaju
Pinnick boasted to the world that he was going to pay me 6 monthsโ
salary in advance, we were never ever going to be owed as he had
procured sponsorship from Zenith bank, that he knows I am the African
Guardiola etc.
declarations that not only added unnecessary pressure on us but made us
hated by certain quarters as โprima Donnasโ. Far from smart at all!
โWe now know that, that was a ploy to make the world falsely believe
that I was giving all the tools to succeed whilst intending to
eventually starve us of tools to succeed in reality to have a scape goat
and employ his dream foreign coach for obvious reasons, as was tried
failingly recently!
โThis false claim was repeated often by the Nff and Mr Pinnick often in
the following months whilst I was not only u paid but so were my
assistants too.
โIn October 2015, with the belief that I had millions from the Nff,
kidnappers attacked a family member of mineโs home in Lagos, but thanks
to God the intended victim was not at home.
โShaken at the news, I called Mr Amaju to inform him of my displeasure
of his false public declarations in my regard and there and then the
seed of Resignation started to grow in me. Is this worth my peaceful
family suffering?
โI signed my contract as Chief Coach Of the super Eagles in July 2015
and was paid in August for July and August but did no longer get any
payments till January 2016.My assistants were worse off as they received
just a monthโs pay as at January 2016.The Nff and its allies in public
claimed otherwise!
โWhilst this was the case, president Pinnick still kept on telling the world I was paid in advance several months.
โAll equipmentโs I used to coach, even as down to simple cones and
tactics boards, I had to buy them all myself as the super eagles had
none available!
โIn February 2016 I wrote an official demand letter to the Nff asking
for payment of my owed wages otherwise I would act as the international
law demands.
โThe International law states that if after serving your employer as a
coach a demand letter of payment and they refuse to pay, you are still
entitled to the total sum of the remaining totality of your contract
should you resign!
โAs at today by my reckoning, I am still being owed wages and should it
come up to CAS (The international Court of Arbitration of sports) the
NFF will be forced to pay me the sum of the contractual remaining 28
monthsโ salary in addition to the owed wages. I leave you to calculate
how much that is. In my place what would you do today?
โSuper Eaglesโ Assistant Coach Jean Franรงois Losciutoโs near death experience.
โAfter the first round of CHAN training preparations in Abuja Nigeria,
the team landed Pretoria for the final stage of the CHAN preparations.
โTwo days later my assistant coach Jean Francois Losciuto collapsed in
the lobby of the hotel and was rushed to the hospital. The doctors
refused to operate unless payment was paid in advance.
โThe Nff had failed to inform the Embassy of Nigeria in South Africa of
our presence hence we were all on our own and jean Franรงois was facing
probable death.
โI therefore had to put up a deposit payment that allowed the hotel to
admit and stabilize him before operation. Eventually he was operated on
and what was dug out from his stomach was the scariest experience we
ever saw till then. The metal was 4.8centimeters long!
โHad he not been timely operated on he would have died and how that 4.8
centimeters piece of metal got into his stomach was a mystery to the
doctors and still is to us till date, but the most painful part of it
was barely was this made public knowledge to our country we were serving
by our so called sports editors.
โImagine near death and the people you serve are not intentionally well informed by the press? Scary no?โ
The former Coach also talked more on his clashes with the NFF technical committee.
Oliseh wrote:
โIn my entire 23 years of involvement with the Super Eagles, never has
the working conditions and player welfare been as bad as it was when I
was in charge. The team stood out like beggars!
โFor a team like the legendary super eagles, our players were not
furnished with as little as bathroom slippers from NIKE. The training
equipmentโs had to be bought from local stores in Aba and Lagos.
โFootball shoes were not available and on the camp in South Africa during CHAN, I had to buy 2 football shoes for my players.
โEven the barest minimum like food was lacking. Feeding was unsuitable
to put it lightly and had to pay for the feeding of the team. Little did
I know that not only will I not be reimbursed, it would be contested by
the Nff and I would be criticized for it?
โThe Nigerian ambassador to South Africa was rightfully incensed as to
why the Nff failed to notify him of the teamโs arrival to south Africa
and be left to fender in such a sorry state!
โI had organized via my South African friends the world standard
performance centre in Pretoria for the super eagles and the on the only
thing the Nff was left to do was the accommodation and transportation,
and those were the areas we saw hell!
โThe camping and tournament proper of CHAN lasted more or less 5 weeks,
first stage in Nigeria, to South Africa (Pretoria) and then finally,
Rwanda. All through this period not only were the coaches, players and
staff unpaid and uncared for but we were completely abandoned. In a 2
star hotel, poor nutrition, room states and dangerous conditions.
โWhen as a coach I tried to enquire for a change we were instructed not
to share this with the public as the Nff was cash strapped.
โThat would have been acceptable if the whole federation were not at the
same period on a paid holiday trip of over 60 officials for over a week
to expensive London hotels whilst we barely had food to eat on a
national mission 6,000 kilometres away from home.
โThe training equipmentโs were all lacking, 2 sets of jerseys and though
Nff is sponsored by NIKE, the players barely had bathroom slippers to
walk around in but also no football shoes.
โI had no choice seeing the sorry state of these poor boys but to
arrange for feeding at my own expense and buy football shoes for some of
the players whose shoes became damaged.
โThe accommodating conditions chosen by the federation were worse in
Rwanda and though we were leading the Group heading off to the Final
group game versus Guinea, the boys awaited some form of aid financially
from the Nff to ease up but all promises were never honoured.
โThe disappointing Phone call from the Nff President Pinnick just hours
to the game that he would be coming over with the playerโs remunerations
only when the team got to the finals broke down the morale of the boys
and obviously we lost the game and faced elimination.
โTill date these boys are yet to be paid their owed allowances in full 6 months later.
โIt should be noted that Nigeria was the only team at this tournament
without leading federation members present. Only Mr Chris Green of the
technical committee stayed behind but he lodged in a 500 dollars a night
5 star hotel and we barely ever saw him!
โHaving played, captained and now coached the super Eagles I could read
the Nff easily .The crisis that now exists today I saw it coming way
back as in November 2015 when we camped and beat Swaziland to qualify
into the world cup qualifiers group stage in port Harcourt.
โThe moment Ayansi was replaced as head of the infamous technical
committee by Mr Chris Green, we all knew that disaster and chaos was on
the way.
โChris Green is a man who late Stephen Keshi almost beat up just midway
into the 2013 AFCON adventure in South Africa and eventually was going
around all of Rwanda telling all who cared to listen that he won the
2013 AFCON for Nigeria and the 2014 world cup qualification and not
Keshi.
โHow? I leave you to guess as I donโt remember him ever scoring one goal or being a player or coach at these events.โ
