Sunday Oliseh, former Super Eagles coach has made startling revelations on how he almost lost his life as as Nigeria’s national team coach.
He gave this revelation on Sunday, via a post on his blog, sundayoliseh.tv, the link which he also shared on his Twitter handle.
Oliseh was appointed and signed his contract as chief coach of the Super Eagles in July, 2015, but resigned in February, 2016 after spending seven months on the job.
Two of the cogent reasons Oliseh gave then for quitting Eagles job were unpaid salaries and poor working conditions.
Also, the former Eagles coach said he Oliseh had a lot of difficult times with the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) and senior members of the team such as the goalkeeper Vincent Enyeama, Mikel Obi and Victor Moses.
Narrating his near-death experience on his blog, Oliseh wrote, “One day whilst coaching the Super Eagles in Abuja stadium prior to the Burkina Faso game, all of a sudden I felt dizziness, light headedness, headache and could barely stand. I managed to finish the session before calling on the doctor into my room who was clueless to what was happening.
“From then on it was sleepless nights, loss of appetite, high blood pressure and before I knew it I started losing weight.
“After several visits to doctors abroad nothing was found though the doctors found anomalies they couldn’t pin point the actual illness to.
“For 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.”
Refuting the NFF President Amaju Pinnick’s claim that Super. Eagles coaches were paid up front, Oliseh wrote:
“On 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 months’ 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. These were declarations that not only added unnecessary pressure on us but made us hated by certain quarters as ‘prima Donnas.’
“We 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 scapegoat and employ his dream foreign coach for obvious reasons, as was tried failingly recently!”
Former Super Eagles Coach Oliseh said it was the noise made by the NFF on his salary payment that alerted the kidnappers who targetted his family members.
According to him: “In October 2015, with the belief that I had millions from the NFF, kidnappers attacked a family member of mine’s home in Lagos, but thanks to God the intended victim was not at home.
“Shaken 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?
“I 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 month’s pay as at January 2016. The NFF and its allies in public claimed otherwise.”
On what the replacement of Ayansi as the head NFF technical committee Oliseh wrote: “The 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.
“Chris 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.”