Few months after winning the African Nations Cup, the Nigerian Football governing body has said that it is broke and will need to cut down its spending.
The Confederations Cup-bound Super Eagles had refused to take a $2,500-a-man bonus for Wednesday’s 1-1 draw with Namibia in Windhoek.
The members of the team had insisted on being paid the full win bonus of $5,000 each.
The African champions failed to fly to South Africa from Namibia on Thursday due to a row over win bonus for a World Cup qualifier as they were all held up in their hotel rooms in Namibia an hour to departure to Johannesburg.
The Super Eagles ought to have flown out of Windhoek to Johannesburg on Thursday afternoon, and be on their way to Sao Paulo, Brazil, minutes before 6pm South African time.
And they would have been in Sao Paulo by midnight and connect immediately to Belo Horizonte, venue of their opening match of the FIFA Confederations Cup against Tahiti on Monday.
The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) president Aminu Maigari met with the team Wednesday night to explain to them that the organisation is broke and so the need to be prudent in their spending.
However, panellists on Channels Sport on Sunday including the Weekend Editor of SportsDay, Desmond Ekwueme, Jimmy Ogunlana and Yemi Bakara disagree with Mr Maigari’s position that the NFF is broke.
Mr Ekwueme described the disagreement between the Super Eagles’ players and the NFF as scandalous insisting that the purpose of winning the nation cup is to make money.
“Football is business. So if you are saying that after winning the nations cup, you don’t know that you have a brand – the trophy is a brand; the players are brand in their rights, even the NFF is a brand – so if you’re saying you don’t know you have a brand, somebody should just leave,” he said.
For Mr Bakare, the NFF is being dishonest.
“You say there’s no money and these boys are seeing you junketing around spending money lavishly,” he said.
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