Super Eagles Job Nearly Cost Me My Life, Oliseh Reveals

Oliseh, who disclosed this via his blog, SundayOliseh.tv, added that alongside the Nigeria Football Federation, some senior players like Mikel Obi, Vincent Enyeama and Victor Moses tried to sabotage him.

The 41-year-old resigned in February citing unpaid salaries and poor working conditions as reasons for leaving the job.

According to him: “…Whilst coaching the Super Eagles in Abuja stadium prior to the Burkina Faso game. All of a sudden, I felt dizziness, light headedness, headache and could barely stand. I managed to finish the session before calling on the doctor into my room who was clueless to what was happening.

“From then on, it was sleepless nights, loss of appetite, high blood pressure and before I knew it I started losing weight.

“After several visits to doctors abroad nothing was found though the doctors found anomalies they couldn’t pin point the actual illness to.

“Prior to the away trip to Burkina Faso for the final CHAN qualifier game in Port Harcourt after lunch I was struck with the worst feat of this illness again. Could not walk, talk, dizzy and felt like I was going to pass out.

“I quickly demanded to be rushed to the airport and with the evening flight travelled to Germany to see specialists. After two days of non stop tests, I was diagnosed to have narrowly escaped a total collapse in Nigeria.

“For weeks I was bed ridden, lost 7 kilos and could barely walk 5 metres without sitting down. My family was petrified and all feared the worst. One thing was for sure though had I not taking that evening flight to Germany when I did, there was a strong possibility of a far worse outcome. Thank God for his mercies.”

He also took a swipe at the NFF President, Amaju Pinnick, who he described as a liar, regarding coaches being paid up front.

He wrote, “On the day I was unveiled, the very vocal president of the NFF, Amaju Pinnick boasted to the world that he was going to pay me 6 months’ salary in advance, we were never ever going to be owed as he had procured sponsorship from Zenith Bank, that he knows I am the African Guardiola etc. These were declarations that not only added unnecessary pressure on us but made us hated by certain quarters as ‘prima Donnas.” 

“We now know that, that was a ploy to make the world falsely believe that I was giving all the tools to succeed whilst intending to eventually starve us of tools to succeed in reality to have a scapegoat and employ his dream foreign coach for obvious reasons, as was tried failingly recently!”

Recall that few months after Oliseh replaced Keshi as Super Eagles’ head coach, he had a misunderstanding with Mikel and also fell out with Enyeama at a training camp in Belgium.

Speaking on what transpired between them Oliseh said: “Most players reported to camp on Monday prior to the Tanzania game, Vincent Enyeama was supposed to fly in Tuesday Morning, only for me to be surprisingly informed via sms that he was skipping the game because he lost the mum some weeks earlier.

“I called him up and made an agreement with him, as I needed not only my captain and such a good goalkeeper for my opening game, that if he came for the game on Friday I would release him to go to the village after the game and skip the friendly game versus Niger scheduled for 3 days later after the Tanzania encounter, which he agreed.

“The team was scheduled to fly out on Thursday. On Wednesday afternoon Enyeama called to say he was not coming for the game, definitively.

“I was shocked as we had an agreement, we needed his experience, leadership and I was aware he was yet to miss a training session for his club side talk less of a league game.”