Sunny Oliseh as Super Eagles Coach: Not Nearly Enough...

1. The termination of Stephen Keshi's contract by the NFF culminated one of the worst examples of political interference and dysfunction to bedevil Nigerian football. It also marked the predictable, but still sad end to a tenure that began with the pleasant surprise of an ANC title, but ended with Keshi leaving the Nigerian national team in worse shape than he met it.
2. How a manager can take a country to the pinnacle of the African game, both as player and coach, yet sink to the morass that he did at the end, is by itself evidence of the chronic lack of professionalism that underlined much of Keshi's tenure, with decision making, both on and off the field that neither had science, evidence or reason behind it, except for endless whispers of pecuniary interests...
3. That Nigeria would rise to the pinnacle of the African game by winning the Nations Cup under him and yet fail to qualify in the very next, is stark proof of the lack of serious planning that underlined his tenure. It underlined a complete failure to build on the wonderful achievement of a Nations Cup title, and a huge missed opportunity, bringing Nigeria right back to where it was in 2010!
4. It is against this sad background that Sunny Oliseh takes the reigns of the Super Eagles, with the omens already decidedly against him! Why do I say this?
5. Because some of the major underlying factors that led to the failure of Stephen Keshi and the poor state of the Nigerian national team remain today, and worse have yet to be diagnosed, much less analyzed. The appointment of Oliseh thus comes, not as the fruit of systemic analysis, but the culmination of a protracted political struggle...
6. Let there be no misunderstanding. As an individual, I have every confidence in the strength of character of Oliseh. As a person, both on and off the field, he often cut a different picture from most of his peers, especially in terms of his professionalism and studious dedication to the game. But absent a concerted program to address the inherent weaknesses in our football, Oliseh can only take Nigeria to the extent to which he as a person can, by dint of personal hard work and perseverance, and dedication to the professionalism that has gotten him thus far.
7. The truth is that Nigeria is today victim to some of the underlying shifts in the global game, with the model of developing a national team through the European league, increasingly under threat.
8. Lacking a truly professional league, Nigeria is developing coaches by trial and error, depending on the individual strength of a new generation of coaches, without the requisite administrative support, and thus compromising their careers even before they got started!
9. Lacking a truly functional domestic game, Nigerian players are at the mercy of personal commercial interests, such as the kind that 'warehouses' the most talented domestic players in pseudo-academies for marketing purposes, rather than develop them through the rigors of a professional league.
10. The days that a corps of triumphant U-17 championship winning players can move straight from Nigeria to the cusp of the Ajax first team within a season are long over, as we can see from the struggles of our last squad. Something is deeply wrong with a Nigerian national team that can go to the mundiale with a fullback of such abysmally poor technical quality as Juwon Oshaniwa, and its not simply about selection...
11. While Stephen Keshi understood the effects of these shifts and sought to build the national team from the domestic base, his project was compromised almost from the very start, descending into the farce that his selections became in the end. Conversely, Amaju Pinnick's approach of building the national team from diaspora Nigerians is not based on a solid foundation. While diaspora Nigerians have a role to play in the Super Eagles, it can only serve as a gap-filler.
12. While I am impressed by the carte blanche remit that the NFF has given Oliseh to rebuild the national team, I am convinced that it is not nearly enough!
13. It is my considered opinion that the appointment of Oliseh should be followed immediately by the sacking of Shaibu Amodu as technical director and his replacement with someone who actually understands the role, is trained for it and does not interpret it to be a mere civil service job.
14. Alternatively, the NFF can replace him by repositioning the Okocha technical study group to play a professional role in rebuilding the Nigerian domestic game, rather than merely supervising the Super Eagles.