Secretary General of National Association of Nigeria Professional Footballers (NANPF) Austin Popo has expressed deep concern over lack of FIFA jurisdiction governing the salaries of Nigerian domestic footballers.
Speaking via telephone to Nigeria Sports Express crew on Jordan FM on Saturday, the former Nigerian international revealed how difficult it has been as a member of the union to press for players’ benefits from clubs.
“Its not been easy, the peculiarity of our situation in Nigeria makes it look like the Business of the union is just to fight for players salaries because it has become a norm and it is very unfortunate.
“What makes the situation even worst is that for the past six years we don’t have the players status committee functioning, and it like running a country without the judiciary.
“We’ve made several attempts, wrote several letters unfortunately it hasn’t yeild any results.
“Where we are now I think FIFA needs to take a second look at it rules when it comes to the issues of the domestic players playing in the league, by their rules there is no Jurisdiction to intervene when it come to players salaries for domestic players.
“Like the foreigners who has the same issues with our Nigeria players like the case of Rivers United, Warri Wolves and few others, some of these players from Ghana, Carmeroon take the case to FIFA that is what the rules says, because FIFA Arbitration is functioning.
“This same clubs that don’t comply with decision from Nigeria, they don’t have a choice they pay as much as five, six and seven millions that am aware of, it is very unfortunate the fight hasn’t been easy.
“Even some of the cases that was decided since 2010 re-validated 2015 the issues of Nasarawa United and some others, we have to find a way of supporting the play to take their matter to the industrial Court, fortunate enough some of them have got their money and some others are still pending in the industrial Court which is not supposed to be. So its an issue we need to look at critically.” he concluded.
