The Federal government through
the National Sports Commission (NSC) has threatened to stop the planned
unveiling of Sunday Oliseh as the new head coach of Super Eagles by the Nigeria
Football Federation (NFF) on Wednesday July 15th.
According to The Guardian, a
letter was sent to NFF from the office of the NSC yesterday July 12th, stating
that Sunday Oliseh's appointment as the new head coach for Super Eagles after
Stephen Keshi's sack did not conform with the Procurement Act procedure for
engagement.
According to NSC, the office of
the head coach of the Super Eagles is still vacant and no one has been
appointed to take over from Stephen Keshi. A source in the Nigeria Sports
Commission's management team said.
"The procedure for hiring
Sunday Oliseh did not pass through the Procurement Act. It was the same when
the NSC employed the High Performance Directors. The Sports Commission
requested for waiver for selective bidding, which enabled us to select people
based on their credentials. We selected people and interviewed them in the
United Kingdom.
The Deputy Director in charge
of Procurement attended because it is a procurement exercise, which must go in
accordance with the Procurement Act. The engagement of Oliseh is a contractual
one but it is unfortunate that the federation may not have been guided
accordingly.
If the federation goes ahead to
unveil Oliseh on Wednesday without following the due process, they would be
violating the Procurement Act, they would be found liable. The truth is that
even if they have secured the consent of a private company to pick Oliseh’s
bills, the law of the land on engagement must be observed.
The procedure is for the NFF to
write to the Sports Commission informing them of their plans to engage a
technical expertise like the Eagles chief coach and his assistants, specifying
the terms of relationship. If they don’t want to advertise, they can do
selective bidding. If they must interview and hire Oliseh alone, they must
apply for waiver of certificate of no objection giving reason for the decision
to settle for him alone.
Unveiling him on Wednesday is
tantamount to violation of the due process of the procurement in accordance
with Procurement Act. Writing to NSC is just a point of information and point
of information is not a legal process. NSC has no business with their
day-to-day operation but if the operation violates the law, we will draw their
attention to it and take any managerial and administrative measure that must be
taken.
As I speak to you, NSC does not
know whether there is any unveiling this week because we are an institution
guided by official communication and far as we are concerned, nobody from the
federation has communicated to us officially if there will be any unveiling".
he said
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