Forget Enyeama, Get A Capable Replacement

Forget Enyeama, Get A Capable Replacement - Onigbinde

Photo Credits : www.goal.com

According to the Onigbinde who discovered him and later took him to the 2002 FIFA World Cup where his awe-inspiring displays earned him the no.1 jersey, Enyeama stands out among his peers and has served the country very well.

"Enyeama is a grown up man and if he feels he has had enough, we should congratulate him for the services he has rendered and wish him all the best," Onigbinde told Goal.

"When I started recruiting for the Super Eagles for the 2002 Fifa World Cup, I went to watch a game between Enyimba and Julius Berger in Abeokuta, he stood that in the game and I invited for to the Super Eagles.

"There were some good goalkeepers' qualities that I saw in him with most in the Nigerian league do not have, so I made up my mind that he was going to be in my team."

With fingers pointing at coach Sunday Oliseh who has been held responsible for the former Enyimba's decision, Onigbinde said Nigeria should stop crying over spilt milk, rather the NFF should start hunting for better goalkeepers for the senior national team.

"The incident in Belgium wasn't Enyeama first trouble with the national team, and I guess this time around, there are some certain things he does not like about the national team set up and decided to quit. If that is the case, I think he has made the right decision," he continued.

"This is not the time to lament his retirement, instead we should look for how we can look for his replacement and that depends on the NFF.

"We don't have a well-structured football developmental programme in Nigeria, and this gets me angry. If we had one, we wouldn't have been wailing over one player's retirement.

"And should we not get things right by developing football from the grassroots, we will have cases in the future where you will see one player holding the country to ransom.

"This could have been a white goose chase if I never tried it. Between 1984-85 when I was national team coach, there was no single foreigner in my team and we won the silver medal at the 1984 Africa Cup of Nations in Cote d'Ivoire.

"In 2002, I started from home and that was what brought players like him, [Femi] Opabunmi, [Peter] Odemwingie and even [Joseph] Yobo. That should be the approach of the NFF now to get a better replacement that would stand the test of time," he concluded.

Comments

BUHARI: TURNING APPOINTMENTS INTO DISAPPOINTMENTS

By Jaafar Jaafar Ponder over this Hausa proverb: “sawun keke ba’a gane gabanka”, which roughly translates to “a bicycle’s contact patch does not tell where it comes from or where it heads to”, and see how it aptly describes Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari. Bearing in mind the current realities in our polity, how would you, in your wildest dream, think the Secretary to the Government of the Federation will come from the North? The very North that has a President, a Senate President, a Speaker, a Head of Service, a Chief of Staff, a Chief Justice, and what not? While Mr. President is likened to the proverbial “sawun keke”, the pigmentation of his appointments may be likened to “birgimar hankaka”, literally meaning the wallow of a pied crow. When a pied crow wallows, the Hausa say, you will see both the white patch on its gullet and the black plumage that covers most of the bird’s body. In the appointment of the GMD of NNPC, President Buhari showed Nigeria...

DSS Arrest Over 15 Key Boko Haram Members Across Nigeria - Tony Opuiyo

No fewer than 15 key members of the boko haram sect were arrested across Nigeria by the operatives of the DSS. According to a statement by a DSS official, Tony Opuiyo, said the infiltration of the terrorists into other states was a fallout of the pressure being put on the terrorists in their core areas of strength in the North-east. The statement by the DSS ; In line with the Department of State Services’, DSS, re-strategised Counter Terrorism measures to combat the menace of the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria, the Service has continued to make significant breakthroughs in this direction. This followed the rounding up of notable commanders and frontline members of the notorious group from different parts of the country. It should be noted that the group’s new pattern of movement and spread is necessitated by the pressure being put on them in their core areas of strength in the North East. 2. Consequently, a number of them have been arrested in Lagos, Kano, Pla...

Okro Soup Issues By Sonala Olumhense

Once upon another life, I was attending a literature conference at the University of Calabar when a friend of mine took interest in one of the students. He thought his best chance was through the front door: ask her out. But a friend of hers thought differently, and she asked me share this wisdom with my friend: “If you want to eat Okro soup,” she counseled, “you don’t go diving into the middle!” I advised my friend accordingly. He thought about it for a while. “They have Okro soup politics here?” he asked me. “So exactly how do they eat Okro soup?” I told him what I was told: “First, you eat around the plate!” He didn’t take too kindly to the advice, as he mumbled some indistinct philosophy about desiring to meet Okro with hunger, or something like that. It did not occur to me at the time to question my interlocutor as to whether the approach to eating Ogbono, Nigeria’s pre-eminent soup that is similar to Okro, was different under that same wor...

Extra Reporters

Search This Blog