Nigeria are desperately trying to rescue their 2006 World Cup dreams and NFA chairman Ibrahim Galadima told KICKOFF on Wednesday that Onigbinde and former international Sylvanus Okpala will form part of a Technical Study Group to offer advice to the Austin Eguavoen-led coaching crew.

“This was part of the recommendations that the Technical Committee set up after the Angola match made to the Sports Minister,” Galadima told KICKOFF. “When we decided to appoint a foreign coach, there was no need for that, but we have now decided to go back to those recommendations in view of the present developments.”

Onigbinde, who led the Super Eagles to the 2002 World Cup, was a member of the committee that made that recommendation and he told KICKOFF the rationale behind the thinking “Our reasoning was that there was no time to go through all the process of searching for a coach, interviewing different coaches and negotiating with them when we should be focused on the task at hand, but the board decided to go ahead and hire a foreign coach,” Onigbinde told KICKOFF.

The current development implies that the NFA have dropped the idea of a foreign manager for the Super Eagles, at least for the time being and Galadima explains why “It will create more confusion. The time isn’t there and we need to move forward. At the moment we are going ahead with preparations for our friendly matches. The first will be with a home-based team wile the second is against Libya in August.”