The Minister of Youth and Sports, Barrister Solomon Dalung, has said that the Super Eagles can even win the 2018 World Cup with the standard attained by the team in the ongoing qualifying series.
Coming on the heels of the barrage of criticisms which greeted his comments that Nigeria should stop attending the FIFA World Cup because of its huge financial costs, Dalung in an interview aired on Channels TV, said he is committed to the project of Nigeria at the World Cup.
“I am convinced that with our performance so far in the qualifying series, we will end up winning the World Cup ticket. I am optimistic that our performance at the World Cup proper might take us far if not winning the Cup. Because we are not just playing to secure the qualification ticket, we are even targeting the Cup,” he said.
Dalung said the interview he granted the Voice of America (Hausa Service) did not reflect what he actually meant saying people were misinformed by the narrative released to the public.
“I granted this interview about four months ago and the way it was handled made people to react the way they did. We will not allow the negative narrative to cause confusion and we cannot afford to bring ourselves down by changing the narrative because it is like we want to change the rule of the game midway.
“Through my commitment as a person, my body language is very very clear because when the Super Eagles were to travel to Ndola to face Zambia, the request from the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) for funds came in very very late and I had to postpone going to church to secure the confidence of Mr President who mobilised on the personnel to work on Sunday on the memo and money was made available for the trip.
“And what came out of this was that for the first time in the history of this country, Nigeria defeated Zambia in Zambia, so, is anybody fair to Solomon Dalung to say he is not supporting the Super Eagles?
“By the nature of the narrative put before them, people were misinformed. Some even made hard comments {against me} and I want to appeal to them that they were misinformed.
“So, let us come together and work for the benefit of Nigeria. We are making strategic moves, we are monitoring, our ears are on the ground and we want Nigerians to support this team,” he said.
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