S-i-a-s-i-a: Group plans protest march in Lagos, Abuja

Keshi and Siasia

When Nigeria drew with Guinea and failed to qualify for the 2012 Nations Cup, journalists confronted Austin Eguavoen and reminded him that the fall started when he led Eagles to the 1-0 defeat in Guinea before Samson Siasia was given the job.
Eguavoen defended himself this way: “Nobody should blame me for that defeat. They should blame it on the crisis in our football. Some people were fighting the federation and we understood that the NFF President stayed away from arrest because the people used the police too.
There was confusion and communication broke down. We didn’t know that we had a match as the match had been rescheduled two times because of the crisis in Nigeria. Even FIFA was monitoring us. The police were said to have taken over the federation when a group said that they were the authentic FA.

Then one day we woke and were told that we would play in Guinea at the weekend. Unprepared we left, played the match and lost. Under such circumstance, how would a team do well?
There were court cases and the FA had no concentration. In short, we didn’t have any federation at the time. It affected the team too.”
The same group Eguavoen referred to, we gathered yesterday, is planning a protest march in Lagos and Abuja against sports officials.
Their agitation, we gathered, is that Nigeria failed to qualify for the Nations Cup and that heads must roll.
A sports ministry source said yesterday that “there’s nothing wrong in a group making a peaceful protest after a bad result like the Nations Cup ouster of October 8 but politicizing it is the problem because they are now linking it up with Samson Siasia’s sack.”
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