From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
As Nigerians continue to undertake a postmortem of Team Nigeria’s participation at the just concluded Paris Olympics Games in France, the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), has exonerated itself from the unimpressive performance of Super Falcons.
The Nigerian senior female national football team had crashed out at the group stage of the football event in the mundial, losing all their three matches.
Super Falcons’ campaign at the Paris Olympics came crashing after losing its last encounter with Japanese ladies in their last Group C, having lost the first two group matches against Brazil and Spain to finish last in the group.
Criticisms have continued to trail the Randy Waldrum-led ladies’ outing with many blaming the football federation for the shoddy preparation of the ladies.
However, reacting formally to the pre-tournament preparation and the outing, a member of the NFF board, who craved anonymity told SportingSun that the football federation rather deserve commendation for assisting the team which resulted in the participation.
Blaming the Ministry of Sports Development for deliberately failing to release fund for the pre-tournament camping, the NFF source disclosed that it had to source for funds to enable the team to camp and gel together ahead of the games.
“It can only take somebody far from the federation to blame NFF over the preparations of the ladies. The board made frantic efforts to ensure that the ministry released fund for the camping of the ladies, but we could not get any positive response from the Minister despite confirmation that the Federal Government has released funds to it.
“The situation left us with no option than to source for funds and camp the ladies for the weeks they stayed before the commencement of the games. It would have been worse if we did not make that move. We konw that the tournament just ended, but as I talk with you we have gotten a refund of the fund we used to camp the team from the ministry.
“Yes, we have gotten promises but there is no cash backing yet. So, it will be unfair for anybody to blame the federation for the team’s outing because once the team qualified for such tournament, it becomes the responsibility of the federal government through the ministry of Sports Development to prepare the team,” the federation’s source told our correspondent.