Oliseh withdraws lawsuit against NFF

Former Nigeria coach Sunday Oliseh has withdrawn a law suit against the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), saying it is in the interest of the country.

“I have instructed my lawyers to withdraw the law suit against the NFF,” Oliseh announced on YouTube.

“After speaking with well-meaning Nigerians, who I respect a lot, I also believe it is useless joining issues with people who are bent on deceiving Nigerians and misleading Nigerians and diverting attention from the reality.

“Certain vested interest in the NFF put their own interests first before that of Nigeria. My position of putting Nigeria first was a hindrance to certain vested interests in the NFF.

“If you put Nigeria first, you will always have problems with the NFF.

“This also explains why the benefits of players and wages and coaches are always placed secondary, while other things like team building trips (for FA chairmen) will always be catered to first.”

Oliseh further alleged that rather than for the technical committee to offer him technical assistance, they prefer to impose players on him.

“I asked the technical committee for information to help us against Egypt since July 2015, but I got no such information,” he said.

“Instead what they found more important to them was who will play for Nigeria, who is invited, who will play and I refused because they are not coaches.”

Oliseh also gave more insight surrounding his resignation.

He disclosed he presented a demand letter dated February 16 with a deadline of February 25, no phone call or email was made to address this matter and he then resigned by midnight of February 25.

Meanwhile,  Oliseh will no longer appear before the House of Representatives committee on sports this week until after the AFCON double-header against Egypt later this month.

Nigeria welcome Egypt to Kaduna on March 25 with the reverse leg in Alexandria four days later.

“The meeting has been moved so that the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) could focus fully on the Egypt matches,” an official said.

Oliseh was specially invited by the country’s law makers to present his own side of his resignation story after he quit a month to the matches against Egypt.

The NFF have maintained this committee hearing could be a major distraction for them leading up to AFCON qualifiers.

Nigeria are in danger of missing out on two straight AFCONs after they failed to qualify for the 2015 tournament in Equatorial Guinea.

The Super Eagles are two points behind seven-time African champions Egypt after two rounds of matches with only the overall group winners guaranteed automatic passage to the tournament proper in Gabon next January.

Tanzania and Chad are the other teams in the qualifying group