President of the Professional Footballers Association of Nigeria, PFAN, Tijani Babaginda has advised the leadership of the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF to address the issue of payment for selection in Nigeria football.
The former Nigerian Internation noted that the issue of payment for selection is very real in Nigeria, and that the sooner the NFF leadership begin to beam their searchlight in that direction the better it will be for the Nations football.
He lamented that the influence of the players agent on the National Team coaches is really overwhelming, arguing that it has become sort of a normal thing in the Nations football.
TJ argued further that aside that most of the agents tempt the coaches with money they cannot reject, some of them are even fronting for top Nigeria football administrators, which makes the case more difficult for the coaches to turn down, because if they do, their jobs would be threatened.
“I am not saying this out of mere hear say. I know what I am talking about. This is the reason most of our national teams are struggling. Both the senior National teams and the age-grade once. I can boldly tell you that only about thirty percent of the players in most of these teams made it there on merit. The rest are players who bought their position in the team, or were forced on the coaches by superior powers.
“I remember when I was the SA to Sunday Olise. I know several top Nigeria football administrators who approached me with very big amount for me to help them talk to Olise to feature their players. If I mention their names here Nigeria would marvel, because these were people making decisions for Nigeria football. That was why they had problem with Olise, because he never gave room at all for such, and that was why they worked against his progress and ultimately sacked him.
“The unfortunate thing about this is that this thing is not only a national team problem alone, it is now in our club sides. Coaches are collecting money from players to register them in their clubs, or they bargain how much they would collect from their salaries. It is this bad, and the unfortunate thing is that the thing is spreading wide and nobody seem to care about it. Instead, everybody is pretending like nothing like that is happening, and when you talk about it they would run you down with their paid media men,”
The PFAN president advised the current NFF president, Ibrahim Gusau to demonstrate the willingness to tackle the issue by setting up a secrete committee to investigate the issue. He maintained that Gusau would do the Nation a lot good if he decide to tackle this issue.
“I know the current NFF president is still new, but I would want to advise him to set up something like a secrete committee to go investigate the matter. Members of the committee must be chosen very carefully to avoid picking persons who are also in the business. The committee members must report only to him. This is one way we can tackle this matter, otherwise this thing will finally kill Nigeria football,” he said.
You may want to recall that recently the current coach of the Nations U-20 team, Ladan Bosso raised alarm that player agents were subjecting him to so much pressure, and how he turned down a large sum of amount offered him. Though, he has since refuted the statement after pressure from the high and mighty in the Nigeria Football industry.
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