‘No reasonable justification’ to miss out on AFCON, says Dalung

Solomon Dalung, minister of youths and sports, says Nigeria had no reason whatsoever for failing to qualify for the 2017 Africa Cup of Nation (AFCON).

Speaking at a press briefing in Abuja on Friday, Dalung said: “We lack reasonable justification or explanations for not qualifying.

“It is unfortunate that it is the second time in our second attempt to qualify for the AFCON that we have not been able to make it.”

While apologising to Nigerians, he said that the country could not afford to repeat the same mistakes.

“I had tweeted earlier on to apologise to Nigerians, that our inability to qualify is very unfortunate and below the expectations of many Nigerians.

“However, life itself is full of challenges. You learn from your mistakes. But it thus appear we keep repeating the same mistake year in year out. And this has now brought to the front burner the need to have a careful review of the Nigerian football architecture.

“We need to examine it well, measure it’s performances and try to gauge it with the national aspiration of Nigerians.”

Dalung then listed the factors he said was responsible for the repeated and consistent failures.

” Changing of coaches. Picking and dropping of players now and then, lack of priority hence fire brigade approach and personal interests over national interest are all factors that may have played out in our failure.

On the way forward, he said: “To me, for now, we have not measured up to the expectations of Nigeria and we need to now go back to review the entire architecture.

“To this effect, I have convened a meeting of the entire board of the NFF for a meeting next Tuesday, so as to receive a comprehensive technical report and be able to x-ray it.

“This will help us to come up with solid plans that will be best for Nigeria. This will put an end to the old way of doing things.”