Months after being relieved of his post, the immediate past coordinator of the Super Eagles, Emmanuel Attah has said that sabotage was responsible for the team not qualifying for the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations held in Equatorial Guinea.
The Eagles returned as African champions from the 2013 tournament staged in South Africa but failed to qualify for this year's event after they finished behind South Africa and DR Congo in the qualifying series, with Attah insisting the team's failure was not ordinary.
The former chairman of the FCT FA cited the fallout from the team's success in South Africa with Stephen Keshi's resignation as part of the reasons aside the leadership crisis which attracted several threats of a ban from Fifa.
"l know, I believe and I stand by what I am about to say. Sabotage played a prominent role in our not qualifying for the 2015 AFCON in Equatorial Guinea. We were sabotaged," Attah told DailyTrust .
"Presently I am writing a book on the details of what really transpired. If you rewind your memory to that match in Calabar against Congo, the officiating was quite funny. Very, very funny.
"Later a friend in Ghana where the referees came from confided in me that 'that was what your country wanted'. The details will come. Apart from that when we were about leaving to play South Africa, I played on the psyche of a highly placed member of the then NFF.
"I asked him why did you people abandon us? We used to work together. And he said Riggogo, for that is how he calls me, and I quote him 'I think you people think you can play alone without us, make una go win make we see '.
"I was shocked but I told him, he is not God. Eventually we got a draw against South Africa. The next game was against Sudan in Nigeria and we would have lost, if not by the grace of God," he continued.
"I will trace the problem to the post Nations Cup victory and like I said some of us might have made some mistakes. After the Nations Cup victory, Keshi resigned and we all heard the reasons he gave for his resignation. The manner he went about it did not go down well with the then NFF president [Aminu] Maigari who felt slighted.
"Again, when the team was hosted by the Presidency, either by omission or commission, the NFF with all its contributions was not even mentioned and the backroom staff were left out of the honours list. This was a serious over sight, if it was and that also added to the problems in the team.
"Thirdly we played the qualifiers during the crisis in the NFF and that affected the team. We were not sure whether or not FIFA would ban Nigeria over the election issues.
"Psychologically, the players were not ready for our opening match against Congo and we lost the game in Calabar and that was not good for the team. It affected our subsequent matches," he concluded.
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