By Jacob Ajom

Barely 24 hours after former international, Victor Ikpeba, a member of the technical committee of the Nigeria Football Federation denied knowledge of the appointment of Salisu Yusuf and Ike Shorunmu as members of the coach Samson Siasia’s technical crew, another member of the committee and former handler of the national team, Christian Chukwu has distanced himself from the final decision to pick the duo.

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Speaking with Sports Vanguard on phone from his Enugu base, coach Chukwu said, “I cannot tell you I know the criteria used in picking the two coaches but we all started the process which was inconclusive.”

The former handler of Rangers International Football Club of Enugu said that at the last meeting of the technical committee, it was agreed that each  member of the committee should send, by text, two names(nominees) of his choice for the jobs when they got back to their bases.

“I cannot say whether the secretariat aggregated the number of texts against each of the names sent before they arrived at the two. Certainly, I cannot say much,” Chukwu said.

There was also another aspect of the exercise that Chukwu was yet to understand. He spoke further, “we were told that when the nominees were pruned from the number of text messages, Siasia was supposed to have an input in the choice of who would be his assistants. I do not know if from the names gathered through text messages, Siasia was contacted to make his final choice. May be he was contacted through the same way we were asked to send names, I cannot confirm. Until we meet, I cannot exactly say what really happened.”