Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
It is really not the best of times for former Super Eagles player and chief coach, Samson Siasia. He has become a walking ghost and a pitiable sight as a man facing double jeopardy.
Siasia is confronted with two-pronged challenges, with one of them heavy enough to weigh him down, let alone the two.
It is no longer news that Siasia has been saddled with the herculean task of rescuing his mother from kidnappers who abducted her for more than two months now. He is also battling the severe ban and monetary sanction from the world soccer-governing body, FIFA.
What, perhaps, may be news is Siasia’s claim that virtually everybody seems to have abandoned him to carry his cross all alone for problems that seem to defy immediate solution basically due to the financial requirements.
According to him, as it stands now, at the peak of his of need, help is neither coming from many of the players he nurtured into stardom, nor administrators and politicians he deployed his brand and resources to help actualise their mission and, ultimately, not even from the country he laboured with his blood and sweat to package into a sellable brand in the comity of football nations.
In fact, Siasia, who is gradually sliding into depression and a ghost of himself, lamented that he has been abandoned in the cold.
“Just pray you don’t encounter any problem in this country, even as small as a case in the police station,” he told Daily Sun in an emotion-laden voice.
“Once you have problem, no matter how little, there is every tendency that people will abandon you. You will be on your own.”
The story of Siasia’s travails is really a very pathetic one. Few weeks after the abduction of his 76-year-old mother, Mrs Beauty Ogere Siasia, along two others who have spent over two months in captivity now, the world football governing body clamped a life ban on him from all football related activities in addition to a fine of CHF 50,000.
Although Siasia’s mother was taken away by armed gunmen around 2am since August 14, from her home in Odoni, Sagbama Local Government Area of Bayelsa State, in a similar fashion she was earlier abducted four years ago, precisely in November 2015, and released 12 days after, the abductors have resisted all appeals and entreaties to set her free despite collecting ransom.
“I am not happy with the kidnappers, not that they have abducted my mother the second time, but because they failed to honour their own side of our bargain. We agreed that they would release her if I pay N1.5 million ransom, but after paying the money, they released one of those they abducted along side my mother and held my cousin who took the ransom to them without releasing my mother,” he lamented in a chat with Daily Sunsports/Sporting Sun at the FIFA Goal Project in Abuja.
Asked his next line of action, Siasia, who is looking traumatised, replied: “There is nothing I can do for now. To access where they are holding her, you have to go two hours by boat and, more importantly, I don’t even have the money to give to them because help is not coming from anywhere.
“If I had the kind of money they are demanding, I would have paid to free my mother because she has been seriously sick in their custody. I don’t know where to run to again to source for money. I’ve been at the police headquarters in Abuja, countless times, to see the IGP, but, most times, he had one engagement or the other at the State House.
“It is even more painful that help could not even come from the government, both at national and state levels. I am completely down, thinking how best to rescue my mother without any solution at sight,” he lamented.
Explaining further on the efforts he has been making to ensure his mother regains her freedom, Siasia said: “The police said it’s been difficult tracking the kidnappers, because you can only access the place they are holding my mother by boat, but my major concern now is the state of my mother’s health. For someone who is ill to be held against her will is not only callous, but heart-breaking and sad.
“I don’t have money to give to them again because I can’t even remember when last I had a job, so, where am I going to raise the money. As it is now, I can only keep appealing to the guys to please let my mother go. I want to also appeal to the government or whoever that is capable of helping me to bring back my mother,” Siasia appealed.
Siasia was very furious when asked why intervention could not come from his former players.
“Those ones!” he quipped, adding: “Well, we should all pray we don’t have any problem. These are players I sourced for the fund used in preparing them in France for the Holland 2005 U-20 FIFA World Cup.”
“Many of them are doing very well today, but did they even care to know what I’m passing through now, let alone help me out of my predicament? “Unfortunately, we don’t have good coaches and players’ union. It is just as if everybody wants me to take care of myself, but how can I do that?
FIFA ban
From his response, it seems the efforts to solve the ban FIFA slammed on him is as hopeless as the release of his kidnapped mother. He admitted that although he has actually replied the world soccer-governing body, prosecuting the case at the Court of Administration for Sports (CAS) requires huge amount of fund.
“I’ve already written to CAS, but I’m still facing the same problem of prosecuting the case. There seems to be conspiracy of silence, abandoning me to take care of myself, but how can I take care of myself when it takes as much as €500,000 to follow the case at CAS. Intervention expected
If the assurance on the twitter handle of the Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Sunday Dare, is anything to go by, then there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel on the possibility of the mother of the embattled former Super Eagles’ coach regaining freedom.