By Amaechi Agbo

As uncertainties continue to pervade the football landscape, the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF has stated that it could set aside ‘other national teams’ and focus on the Super Eagles while implementing football activities after the coronavirus pandemic, also known as COVID-19, Bestchoicesports.com.ng can report.

The decision was part of resolutions reached by the federation at the end of its video conference meeting held on Friday.

Aware of the difficult situation the country may face after the COVID-19 impact, the federation says it might priorities national teams’ engagements thereafter.

Apart from setting up a committee chaired by the NFF President, Amaju Pinnick to mediate between it and its sponsors, the federation in an eight-paragraph communique issued noted that “Board mandated the General Secretary to, within the next four (4) weeks, and armed with the realistic projections derivable from the meetings with the partners/sponsors and equipped with new figures from probable subvention from Government and expected grants from the Confederation of African Football (CAF) and world –governing body FIFA, submit to the Board a revised budget for the Federation for the year. This will form the new working document/financial estimate that will be submitted to the NFF Congress for approval at a virtual meeting within the next five weeks, and will guide the operations of the NFF for the remaining part of the year. Extensive sensitisation and mobilisation of stakeholders in the football family will be done for everyone to understand, align with and ingest the new work plan.

“In line with these new realities, the Federation will prioritize programs, activities and competitions in which to partake, with the engagement of the senior teams being the fulcrum. The President and General Secretary are mandated to cut down expenses from all areas possible and enforce belt-tightening measures in the running of the Federation, to ensure the Federation operates only within the framework of guaranteed revenue,” part of the release read.

The NFF President has stated earlier that the priority of the federation will always be with the Super Eagles.

The President stated this when the federation gave a report of the NFF and Super Eagles as well as performance of other cadet teams to the minister of youth and sports development, Sunday Dare.

The minister had ordered the federation to furnish it with report of the performances of the national teams from the U-17 Eaglets, Beach Eagles to the Super Eagles.
The report, the minister said, became necessary after all the national teams that participated in various continental and global competitions failed woefully with the major talking points being the Super Falcons and the Olpic Team who failed to pick any ticket for the 2020 (2021) Olympic Games in Japan.

The federation in the report submitted to the minister of youth and sports, Sunday Dare on 18th November, 2019, stated inter alia “While acknowledging the importance of the qualifying matches/tournaments in which these teams participated and fell short, the Federation defended the technical crews of the teams and justified why they are the best for the positions as at the time they were hired by highlighting their track records.

“Pinnick also stated that the best performance indicator for any country in international football is the A team, in this case Super Eagles, which in recent times drew with five –time world champions Brazil and Ukraine in friendlies, and defeated Benin Republic and Lesotho in 2021 AFCON qualifying matches. These, after finishing third at the first –ever 24 –team AFCON in Egypt this year summer. Moreover, a high number of the players in the present Super Eagles squad passed through the various developmental teams, showing that Nigeria is moving in the right direction.”