Former Green Eagles’ skipper, Chief Segun Odegbami has pleaded with Nigerians to come to Samson Siasia’s aid to enable him clear his name in a match-fixing allegation by the world football governing body, FIFA.
In his piece titled; “Samson Siasia does not deserve to be abandoned NOW!” the 1980 AFCON winner noted that he could hardly recognise the present-day Nigeria from “the country I was born into, grew up in, and served in my own little ways.”
“I am forced again to write about Samson Siasia.
“I have done so twice in the past six months, drawing attention to the plight of a man who has been unjustly condemned by FIFA for a crime that some of us believe he never committed, and that FIFA has never taken the trouble to clearly state, so that the world would know what he did (or did not do).
“Nigerians forget so quickly and easily who Samson Siasia is, and what he has done for Nigeria, and should never have been left alone at this period of his greatest challenge.
“FIFA passed a ‘death’ sentence on him, a life ban from the only activity he has always known throughout his life – football – because he failed to respond to an email sent to him to come and defend himself in a scandalous matter of match fixing.
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“Samson cried out to the world, (and many did not believe him) that he never saw the mail because he had not been using that particular email box for his correspondences for some time. True or not, the facts still remain that nothing categorical was ever traced to him resembling ‘match fixing’ – not a particular match, not a team, not a player(s).
“The least the Nigerian government could do for him is request their Football Federation to conduct a quiet investigation of their own, and brief government before abandoning him to his fate.”
Siasia has until mid January 2020, to file his defence against the match-fixing claims before the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS).
THISDAY