Youth and Sports Minister Solomon Dalung has charged the Nigeria Football Federation to pay the U-23 national team’s coach Samson Siasia.
The Minister gave the charge when Siasia paid him a visit on Monday in his office in Abuja. Siasia had visited with his wife Eunice to thank the Minister for his support to the U-23 team from Atlanta to Rio where they won Bronze in the football event of the Olympics and to officially inform him that his contract with the NFF had ended.
Dalung directed that the NFF Secretary- General Dr Mohammed Sanusi who was also present to ensure that Siasia gets the arrears of his five months’ salaries. “Please pay him his five months salaries arrears. They said he has resigned but he just told me that his contract expired after the Olympics.
His contract expired but you are owing him five months’ salaries and you have gone to employ a foreign coach and will pay him in dollars.
It means you don’t like yourselves and nobody will sympathise with you.
Please spare me the stress of talking about this salary issue again or risk going to war with me. Please pay him and other coaches their outstanding salaries,” Dalung said. The Secretary-General of the NFF Muhammed Sanusi however said that efforts were already being made to pay the coaches. “We have held meetings and we are waiting for the money to drop.
The money is already there in our account but we need to regularize the TSA procedures before we can claim it. We are almost through with the process. Once that is concluded, we will pay them” Sanusi assured. The minister is expected to be on an NTA programme Tuesday Live with Siasia today(Tuesday) to review events leading up to Rio and Nigeria’s participation at the Games.
