Super Eagles’ Coach Stephen Keshi yesterday cried out over
the disdain with which the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) is
treating him by refusing to pay him for the past seven months.
Keshi,
who is being owed about N35 million in salary arrears, poured out his
heart in Abuja at the Home-based Super Eagles’ interactive session with
the media ahead of the team’s upcoming international friendly with
Jordan in Amman. Reacting to a statement credited to NFF Chairman Aminu
Maigari that the allowances and bonuses the team’s coaches earn were
enough to sustain them, Keshi said: “The lowest point of my career is
working and not being paid for seven to eight months. I have never had
this kind of experience before.”
Comparing the situation with what obtained when he coached the Malian
and Togolese senior national football teams, the former Super Eagles
captain said: “In Mali, they will never owe you. Your salary will hit
your account before the end of every month. It was the same thing in
Togo.
“Owing me up to seven months makes me feel I am not being
appreciated. It is like they (my employers) think I am being favoured in
what I am doing.
“I am not being favoured. Whatever I am doing here, I am doing it
with everything I have and I need to be respected to be given my pay.”
He said it was unbelievable that he and his colleagues had worked
without pay for about eight months out of the 24 months they have worked
with the Super Eagles.
Keshi’s words: “I don’t like discussing about money issues and if
there is any NFA member who said we can work for free, then I will want
to speak with him face to face. If they say we can work for free and
that they are not going to pay, so be it. I can’t have my family abroad
and I will be in debt because I have not been paid for seven months and
somebody is saying we should not complain.”
He regretted that the NFF appears not to be concerned about their
plight “in spite of training under rain and sun to make Nigerians
happy.”
Source News Express
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