On the 11th day of January, 2025, I got word that a certain Eric Sekou Chelle who had been appointed Head Coach of the Super Eagles was going to be ‘unveiled’ to Nigeria, on the 13th of January 2025. The announcement which was made on the NFF website on 7th January 2025, sent shockwaves right through the football community in Nigeria, apparently because the individual employed is Malian, African and French.
Many of us found this announcement weird, stunning and utterly bewildering. Nigeria, with a population of over 200 million has a sterling reputation with football. It is our national sport and has been said to be the only thing that unites Nigerians. Our players are known worldwide as some of the very best. I remember some time ago when I found myself in a German town. My passport to great camaraderie was being identified as a Nigerian who came from the same country as Daniel Amokachi, Emmanuel Amunike, Samson Siasia, Nwankwo Kanu, Tijani Babangida, George Finidi, Rashidi Yekini and JJ Okocha. Most of these players who have now become coaches are known to be battle-ready, hard-nosed, tested and trusted and know our turf more than any other coach, African or International.
Yet, in the place of any of these tested and trusted chaps, we opted for a relatively obscure, comparatively irrelevant a fellow? Something seemed to be off with this appointment, and the only way I know I could find out was to attend the unveiling ceremony of this chap. And as Shakespeare would have said it, it was an o-my-prophetic-soul scenario. A foreboding of things to come at the unveiling in the shifting of time for ‘unveiling’ twice, from 10am to 11am, and then to 12pm. By 12pm, even after the new coach was seated, very highly placed persons running the NFF were nowhere to be seen. When they languidly showed up eventually, there were no apologies for their brazen lateness. Two, this was supposed to be an opportunity to ask the kind of questions that would have helped Nigerians get a hang of the hiring process of a position as sensitive and strategic as that of a Head Coach or Technical Adviser. How many coaches applied for the job? How many Nigerian coaches were screened or interviewed for the job? What was the bar, and the operating standard with which the NFF used in sifting those who applied, and how Mr. Sekou Eric Chelle eventually beat every other applicant to become the Head Coach of the Super Eagles of Nigeria? Were there other much more qualified persons apart from Eric Chelle to coach our national team?
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In spite of my insistence to the organizers that I wanted to understand the hiring process, and that we wanted these questions answered, I was by and large ignored. When I met the head of the communications team of the NFF, he wringed his hands in dismay, and said to me: ‘You know na, we are trying to make this short as possible – the man’s English is not that good’. I told this chap that I was not interested in the Chelle fellow, but to speak with somebody in the technical department of the NFF who understands English, and who could put me through the hiring process of Mr. Chelle. He pointed me in the direction of a certain gentleman, who told me plainly – ‘I was not there when the technical session in selecting the Head Coach took place, I was abroad! I just flew in yesterday from abroad to grace this unveiling’, he said.
The contract that Mr. Chelle allegedly signed with the Nigerian people was that he was going to pay his three assistants from his pocket. I thought this was odd, and just as I was raising my hand to protest, there were very paternalistic contributions from here and there, that – ‘oga, na so dem dey do am, the payment for the assistants is factored into his salary’. I thought this was odder that odd, so I met the lawyer who handled the signing of the contract at the unveiling of the new Head Coach and asked to see the contract, or to make arrangements for journalists to have access to it. Ordinarily, this is a public document that the NFF can post on their website for Nigerians to gain access. ‘You want to have the contract of a private individual – no way, you can’t have it’, the very supercilious individual told me before he drove off. Much later, I reached a former player and coach of the Super Eagles who told me quite plainly: there was no screening process, bros.
If all of this is not something to be very alarmed and concerned about, then there is the matter of Mr. Chelle’s inability to communicate in the language of drilling, instruction on the field of play – English. As a football coach myself, I throw instructions to my boys from the sidelines – in the heat of the football battlefield. I cajole, instruct, conspire and aspire, and try to convey plans, strategies to my boys in English, pidgin and some Hausa or Yoruba. When Mr. Chelle took the floor to address journalists, he did so in a smattering of, and in painfully terrible English. Most of us in that room barely heard him. If Mr. Chelle will be communicating with our boys on the football battlefield or during training sessions, he will be needing a translator, something that our own coaches will not be worrying about. If the NFF people do not know it, let them understand that even in the English language, no two words convey exactitude of meaning. The matter is worse when you have to translate from French to English. Already, I see higgledy-piggledy, topsy-turviness in the future of our football, going forward.
