Through the National Sports Commission (NSC) the Federal government, yesterday threatened to stop the plan by the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) to unveil Nigerian former international, Sunday Ogochukwu Oliseh, as the new Super Eagles head coach on Wednesday, insisting that the appointment did not conform with the Procurement Act procedure for engagement.
This is coming on the heels of the NSC query to the NFF over the sack of former Super Eagles Chief Coach, Stephen Keshi. The Guardian gathered from the NSC yesterday in Abuja that the commission had written to the NFF, insisting that the position of the head coach for the Super Eagles is still vacant, stressing that it has not received any official correspondent from the federation on the appointment and unveiling of any coach to replace Stephen Keshi, who was sacked last week for applying for the vacant coaching job in Cote d’Ivoire while still on the employment of the NFF.
According to an NSC management egghead: “The procedure for hiring Sunday Oliseh did not pass through the Procurement Act. It was the same when the NSC employed the High Performance Directors. The Sports Commission requested for waiver for selective bidding, which enabled us to select people based on their credentials.
“We selected people and interviewed them in the United Kingdom. The Deputy Director in charge of Procurement attended because it is a procurement exercise, which must go in accordance with the Procurement Act.
“The engagement of Oliseh is a contractual one but it is unfortunate that the federation may not have been guided accordingly. If the federation goes ahead to unveil Oliseh on Wednesday without following the due process, they would be violating the Procurement Act, they would be found liable.
“The truth is that even if they have secured the consent of a private company to pick Oliseh’s bills, the law of the land on engagement must be observed. The procedure is for the NFF to write to the Sports Commission informing them of their plans to engage a technical expertise like the Eagles chief coach and his assistants, specifying the terms of relationship.
If they don’t want to advertisement, they can do selective bidding.” The NSC official further noted, “If they must interview and hire Oliseh alone, they must apply for waiver of certificate of no objection giving reason for the decision to settle for him alone.
Unveiling him on Wednesday is tantamount to violation of the due process of the procurement in accordance with Procurement Act.
“Writing to NSC is just a point of information and point of information is not a legal process. NSC has no business with their day-to-day operation but if the operation violates the law, we will draw their attention to it and take any managerial and administrative measure that must be taken.
“As I speak to you, NSC does not know whether there is any unveiling this week because we are an institution guided by official communication and far as we are concerned, nobody from the federation has communicated to us officially if there will be any unveiling.”
Yakmut said the only official information the NSC has received from the NFF was the answer to its query on the sack of Keshi, adding, “They have already sent two pages of explanation on why he was removed.
They told us how his removal would add value to the game. The Sports Commission has accepted the reasons for Keshi’s sack because we don’t know the content of the contract that brought him in the first place and the one that kicked him out.”
