February 11, 2015 by Tomiwa Omolayo
The Technical Committee of the Nigeria
Football Federation has recommended the super eagles out of contract coach Stephen Keshi to the board of the
federation for contract renewal as the Super Eagles coach. The committee
met in Abuja on Tuesday to deliberate on the matter of substantive
coach for the Eagles amongst other issues.
The Chairman of the committee, Felix
Anyasi-Agwu, who spoke with reporters shortly after the meeting, said
that a national coach will be appointed before the FIFA international
window of March 24.
He also confirmed that the body
considered only Keshi for the position because he was the only person
who applied for the job. The NFF had thrown the position open soon after
the World Cup at the expiration of Keshi’s contract but were forced to
change their position as a result of pressure from highly placed
government officials. No other advertisement for the job was placed
again afterwards.
Anyasi-Agwu said, “The issue of Keshi’s
contract had been discussed and it is left for the board to take a
decision on it. There is nothing wrong with Keshi returning to the
national post. He is the only person that was considered for the
national job.”
Keshi lost his place with the national
team after the Eagles failed to qualify for the 2015 Africa Cup of
Nations, which ended in Equatorial Guinea on Sunday with Ivory Coast as
the new champions. Eagles were the defending champions having won the
Cup in 2013 under Keshi in South Africa.
He was contracted by the sports minister
Dr. Tammy Danagogo on a short-term deal from September last year to
supervise six qualifying matches leading to the AFCON 2015, after his
contract expired at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. He got the boot midway
from the new NFF board led by Amaju Pinnick, as the national team
wobbled against less-fancied teams. But in a dramatic move, his
replacement Shaibu Amodu withdrew his acceptance of the temporary job.
Since then the Eagles have stayed without any substantive coach.
Keshi’s assistant Daniel Amokachi has acted as the head coach leading the Eagles in a few international friendlies.
There were speculations that Keshi would
know his fate after the country’s general elections which were
scheduled for February 14 and 28 but a change of dates for the elections
may have changed a lot of the calculations. It was not very clear
yesterday when the Executive Committee of the federation would meet to
consider the recommendation of the technical committee.
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