Keshi dumps Nigeria for NFF’s unprofessional conducts?

Maigari, NFF boss...could not manage situation

*Assistants owed salaries, allowances

Five nations, noticing the icy relationships between the Nigerian gaffer, Stephen Okechukwu Keshi, and his employers, the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), have opened bids to have him coach their nation. Keshi has kept his suitors at bay to wait until after the finals of the African Nations Cup on Sunday.

South Africa leads the pack of the nations. Scouts representing the five nations had been piling pressures to open discussions with the former Nigerian non-playing captain that won the 1994 Nations Cup in Tunisia whose captain, Joseph Yobo, may also as non-playing captain, take the trophy in South Africa.

If the Nigerians win the Nations Cup on Sunday, Keshi will become the second player to have coached his national team to win the trophy after late Egyptian, Mahmoud el-Ghohary. He will however remain the only player alive to have won the tournament.

www.gongnews.net sources close to the coach said, “Keshi is not happy that his assistants, former Nigerian midfielder, Sylvanus “Quick silver” Okpala, and his age-long backroom staff, Valerie, are only paid half salaries on a number of occasions.

What irked him the more was, the shouting match he had with officials of the NFF on the morning of his team’s crucial match against Cote d’ivoire. He was tactically informed that he has to take a pay-cut and work under the Zambian coach, Hervé Renard or resign.

As quiet as he is, he got so miffed he had to open his mouth, spoke in anger to the Nigerian officials making them understand that he has done more Nigeria than any of them having captained the national team and coached it.

Shortly after the shouting game, while his players were filing out to play the Ivoriens, the team were given their return tickets that they would fly back to the country immediately after the game.

When the team eventually won the match, the same officials celebrated the victory more than the players to the shock and chagrin of the players and officials. Their match-winning bonus was paid about three days later meaning the budgetary provisions had been diverted before new sources were called upon to wire loan to South Africa from Nigeria.