This is following the ongoing Nigeria Football Federation NFF’s search for a Foreign coach to lead the senior team.
While speaking to state house correspondents in Abuja on Tuesday, the Minister said this is because the country does not have the capacity to pay a non-Nigerian coach.
He expressed worries that coaches’ favoritism when picking athletes for competition has affected the selection of indigenous coaches.
He said: “The selection of coach usually is handled by our technical team. We are a supervising ministry. We have little to do with the process but we have a role in guiding what is best for Nigeria.
“I have always maintained that if we cannot pay indigenous coaches which we still owe them some months of salaries, some of them have even died without those salaries, do we still go and look for foreign coach and will he be able to tolerate us without salaries for some time?
“More so that we may also be paying him in hard currency. So, its a fundamental contradiction to swallow easily.
“But there is one aspect of this indigenous coaching that has been responsible for the poor performance of football in Nigeria which Nigerians need to know.
“They have not been able to grow above their parochial sentiment. An example is that a coach will train a team, the team will qualify to go to the next stage, once it becomes international event, they will now submit a different list of people not the entire people who qualified.
“This already has violated what is referred to as team spirit in football. A team that played is different from the one that is going to international competition.
“We have that crisis on our hands now, especially with the list of those who are going to Rio.
“Those who qualified are fundamentally different from those that have been sent to go and play at the finals, making it look like those wheelbarrow.
“You know the wheelbarrow is an instrument that is not important. It can only be kept under perennial sun. Once there is load, you go and pick it.”
Source: Globalvillageextra
