By Ben Efe

Nigeria Football Federation has been thrown off balance by coach Stephen Keshi’s declaration that he was offered a “slave contract”.

Keshi and Amaju

From all indications, the position of the Super Eagles chief coach will remain vacant for sometime as NFF top shots refused to make any statements about the next step forward after Keshi’s rejection of the latest contract offer.

“Please I cannot make any statements for now. There is a whole lot of media frenzy and I don’t want to be dragged into it,” said NFF boss Amaju Pinnick, when we sought his reaction to Keshi’s statement that he was offered a slave contract.

He advised that the NFF spokesman, Ademola Olajire should be contacted for comments, but several phone calls made to Olajire remained unanswered.

Olajire had sent a release appealing to sports journalists not to overheat the “football polity” with their celebration of Keshi’s submissions.

Keshi was widely reported to have dismissed the contract offer of the NFF. “From the clauses I have seen so far, I don’t know what words to use but the contract can be described as a ‘slave contract’”, he said, probably in reference to clauses which make him answerable to several persons and committees.

This no doubt, is like a smack in the face of the NFF officials who had ignored cries by majority of Nigerian football fans not to renew Keshi’s contract after he failed to qualify Nigeria for the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations. The NFF under Aminu Maigari, fired Samson Siasia, when he failed to take the Eagles to the 2012 Nations Cup in Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, this was despite pressure to retain Siasia from higher authority.