NFF Didn’t Seek Ministry’s Help For Falcons, Falconets – Dalung
Minister of Youth and Sports Solomon Dalung has said that his ministry should not be blamed for Super Falcons and Falconets’ financial woes insisting the Nigeria Football Federation did not officially seek intervention of his office.
Tales of woes have trailed the participation of the two teams in the ongoing African Women Cup of Nations and U-20 World Cup as reports suggested players and officials of the sides were not paid their allowances and bonuses.
The minister said his ministry was not directly in charge of the teams and was not officially informed about the travails of the sides.
“We need to understand the ministry’s roles but unfortunately we are always at the receiving end when things like this happen. We need to appreciate that between the ministry and the NFF there is a gamut of rules, we can only come in with intervention to save a situation like this.
“The NFF is in charge of these teams, they raise money and sometimes there are organisations who help financially. If we have a situation like this and we don’t get invited for intervention there is little we can do but if they seek our help, then we will raise a memo and seek the intervention of the Presidency,” he said.
Dalung added that, “I am convinced that Super Eagles performance in the qualifying series will not only earn us ticket to the World Cup but take us far in the competition proper.
We have not been playing only for qualification but doing everything possible to make sure we go far in Russia. We want to see how we can help this team achieve its aim, we only need the support of all Nigerians,” he said.
Darlung has no excuse for not seeing to the welfare of sportlers representing Nigeria in international tournaments. Even if NFF would not approach him, he needs to ask questions about the preparedness of NFF and the preparations they have made for those that will represent Nigeria in any tournament/competition.
He has shown high level of incompetence even if one overlooks his Olympics mess up which we all think he should have learnt from. There is a minister handling 3 very controversial ministries but he is handling one of the soft ones.
Enough of excuses, he should resign if he is not capable of handling the job or his employer should fire him.