“I paid for our flight to Brazil Olympics and hotel” – Ex-Chelsea man Mikel Obi exposes Nigeria NOC, NFF’s failures

Former Super Eagles midfielder Mikel Obi has revealed that he paid for Nigeria’s Olympic football team’s flight to Brazil for the 2016 Rio Olympics, Soccernet.ng reports.

Last week, Mikel got a lot of flack after criticizing players with dual nationalities who fell back to African nations after failing to get called up by European countries.

However, he got a lot of backlash for his statement, and he came out to shed more light on the rational behind his statement on Thursday. In the course of explaining himself, he also laid bare some of the problems he experienced while playing for Nigeria.

Mikel revealed how the poor planning of the Nigeria Football Federation and the Nigeria Olympics Committee almost stopped the under-23 team from playing at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

“When I represented my country at the Olympics in Brazil, we had to fly there, and we waited for morning till night, waiting for a plane to take us to Brazil,” Mikel said on his podcast.

“There was no plane to take us to Brazil because there was in-fighting behind the scene of who was going to pick up the tab.

“The FA didn’t want to pick up the tab, the government I think released the money, but the FA or whoever the money got into his hands refused to release the money.

“So we waited at the airport from money till night but there was no flight. I had to pay for that flight to take us to Brazil. And these are little things.”

Mikel also mentioned that in his playing days, there were occasions when the NFF chose poor hotels for the players, prompting him to pay for another hotel by himself.

“I had to sort out my hotel because the hotel they provided for us were so bad to stay in. I had to move to somewhere more conducive for players to perform,” Mikel added.

Despite Mikel’s revelations, it seems the NFF are past that phase, as in recent years, they have been quite solid with their logistics.