FORMER national team assistant coach, James Peters says Nigeria will be a laughing stock in African football if Samson Siasia is retained as Super Eagles coach.Speaking in Abuja yesterday, Peters told sportswriters that Siasia lacked the moral ground to continue the job.''First, the terms of contract says he should take the Eagles to the semi-final of the Nations Cup. He could not even make it to the Nations Cup, not to talk of reaching the semi-final.''Secondly, Peters said Siasia is not qualified to sit on the technical area of the Super Eagles going by specification of the Confederation of African Football (CAF).''There is a directive from CAF that every national team coach must be certified by CAF through their licenced programmes.Siasia does not have the prerequisite qualification and as such, he is ineligible to sit on the bench during Nigeria's matches.''Peters recalled that Siasia snubbed the opportunity to be part of the CAF-coaching-licence programme held recently in Abuja, adding that if Nigeria keeps him on the job for sentimental reasons, then the Super Eagles should be prepared to play matches without the head coach on the bench.In his own reaction, Musa Talle, Chairman, FCT FA, said Siasia only rode on favourable public opinion to get the Super Eagles job.''He did not have good records with the clubs he handled and on moral grounds, he does not forgive others who offend him, so calling on Nigerians to forgive him now is unacceptable,'' Talle said.Meanwhile,FORMER Secretary General of the Nigeria Football Association (NFA), Dr Tijani Yusuf, has joined the growing list of Nigerians calling for the sack of theSuper Eagles head coach, Samson Siasia.The embattled coach would know his fate today as the executive board of theNigeria Football Federation (NFF), meets in Abuja.Yusuf, speaking in an interview in Lagos pointed out that the process of rebuilding Nigerian football must start in earnest."There are a lot of people who said the Super Eagles is bigger than Siasia to handle and it has come to show now. As I said earlier, we need to start rebuilding the team which may take two to three years. Ghana has done it, so many other countries have done it and they are now reaping the fruits of rebuilding. We should remove the garb of being a big nation. we should not shy away from the fact that we must start from scratch," he stated.Meanwhile, former board member of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), Taiwo Odebunmi, also believes the retention of Siasia for the plum job is unnecessary."You cannot enforce discipline to the detriment of the team. The truth of the matter is that you must use your brain when you want to exercise authority.Siasia is not mature enough to handle the Super Eagles," Odebunmi said.
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