TMCnet News

GLO Premier League and Concerns Over Players' Welfare
[July 28, 2014]

GLO Premier League and Concerns Over Players' Welfare


(AllAfrica Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) The Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL), otherwise known as the Glo Premier League, resumes the second round of the 2013/2014 season today, Sunday, July 27, with the 20 clubs across the country, on an emotional note, going by the financial (salary) crisis the players are passing through in their various clubs.



Worst hit among the 20 clubs are Rangers International Football Club of Enugu, Heartland of Owerri, Nembe City of Yenagoa, Crown FC of Osogbo, Giwa FC of Jos, and Kaduna United, among others, in varying degrees.

This crisis, however, is not an isolated incident among Nigerian premier league clubs, as the footballers are basically professionals without funds to cater for themselves and acquire the tools of the trade.


Authoritatively speaking, before the close of the first round of the league on June 30, the Technical Adviser of Crown FC, Lawrence Akpokona, disclosed to Daily Independent Sports Week that the club's players were being owed wages from February to June, which is still unpaid till date, according to reports.

It was for this reason that the Crown players threatened to go on strike and boycott the on-going Federation Cup matches, where they made remarkable progress in spite of the odds.

When Rangers suspended some of its players before the end of the first round of the season, according to inside sources, the club's management said it was because of the players' 'poor performance,' even in the face of unpaid wages and poor welfare; moreover, no professional footballer can give optimum performance amid poverty anywhere in the world.

For the Owerri outfit, players' mounting debt is already a cancerous disease that the players live with. Strikes to press home their demands are common.

Ironically, the NPFL players have failed to take advantage of the opportunity provided by the League Management Company (LMC) before the season kicked off, by way of sanctions on defaulting clubs, with regard to players' bond.

This was consequent upon the mandatory N150,000 minimum salary endorsed by the LMC for the premier league players, which seemed to have boomeranged as clubs have not been able to pay wages.

It is also on record that the LMC recently condemned the clubs' neglect of players' welfare and threatened sanctions,with july 18 deadline yet the situation has remained the same with only Bayelsa United, Pillars and Abia warriors given clean bill by the LMC who has been an onlooker, as no club has been sanctioned.

To justify the dire financial condition of the players, the Club Owners, ahead of the beginning of the second half of the season on July 27, had called for a shift from the original date of July 20 to enable them sort out their financial predicaments, and the LMC obliged.

The secretary of the Club Owners Association, Alloy Chukwuemeka, had said that the league managers have made their demands known to the LMC and they were expecting it to listen to their requests and shelve the proposed commencement date.

According to him, "We met on Monday night in Abuja and ended the meeting around past four in the early hours of Tuesday, and we made some recommendations to the LMC, ranging from finding a new date for the start of the second stanza of the league and also to see to the payment to the clubs what is due to them from the sponsorship deal from Globacom.

"Clubs need these monies to stay afloat for a couple of matches into the second stanza before the intervention from the state governments," Chukwuemeka said.

Interestingly, the negative financial position has not affected the players' performance to a great extent as some of them such as Ejike Uzoenyi and Ugonna Uzochukwu of Rangers, and Abubakar Ibrahim of Nasarawa United attracted interest from foreign clubs.

It was against this background that the NPFL sponsors affirmed in a statement in Lagos last Sunday, "We were impressed with the stiff competition that characterised the first round of the Glo Premier League. It is a good spell for Nigerian football." The telecommunications company, reputed to be the biggest supporter of football in Nigeria and Africa, also expressed delight at the manner the clubs have beefed up their squads during the break, with further commendations for the rancour-free transfer deals.

"We expect the competition to be even stiffer this time, especially after most of the clubs have oiled their machines in readiness for the second round battle," the statement further said.

Regardless of the sponsor's optimism, the question that has remained on the minds of NPFL followers is: for how long would the players continue to cope with hardship and neglect, and the tall expectations from their clubs and NPFL sponsors? Copyright Daily Independent. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]