By Onochie Anibeze
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.

Keshi and Siasia

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.”

We gathered that the group had severally dropped President Jonathan’s name in the build-up to Samson Siasia’s sack.

This put the federation under pressure over the Siasia issue but the moment Federation President, Aminu Maigari found out that names were merely being dropped, he addressed the media in Abuja to deny that they were under pressure to keep the coach. “It is not true, the Presidency has not mounted pressure on us not to make changes,” he said two days before Siasia was relieved of his job.

“We have had enough politics in our football, let trouble makers stay away and let those running the game be serious otherwise they should be voted out in the next football election; but we must be civil in the way we do things,” a top ministry source said.