AFCON SCANDAL NFF SHORT- CHANGES EAGLES ASSISTANT COACHES

•$116,000 deducted from bonuses 

SUPER EAGLES Assistant Coaches, Sylvanus Okpalla and Valerie Hounandinou, both members of the technical crew whose Nations Cup efforts were crowned with glory, have been short-changed by the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF).

SportingLife gathered from an impeccable source on Monday that 58,000USD which translates into N9.197m was deducted from each of the coach’s entitlements by the federation right from the very first match played by Nigeria at the tournament. The development is coming 11 days after the bonuses of the 23 players and officials owed for defeating Burkina Faso 1-0 in the final match of the Nations Cup were settled.

Each player received 25,000 dollars ($20,000 for the Nations Cup and $5,000 for the draw against Kenya).

Four assistants make up the technical crew with Stephen Keshi the Chief Coach. Curiously the bonuses of first Assistant Coach, Daniel Amokachi and goalkeeper trainer, Ike Shorunmu were not touched. It was alleged that the issue led to a shouting match between the Director General, of the National Sports Commission (NSC) Patrick Ekeji and NFF President Aminu Maigari.

”People are beginning to ask questions. Till date, NFF has not been able to say why the bonuses of the coaches were tampered with. Instead they are attributing the interest of NSC to ethnic reasons,” said our source. “Okay why did they not touch that of Amokachi and Shorunmu? Is it because the other coaches are reserved and would not make noise. It is not fair,” queried the source.

When contacted, NFF Spokesman, Ademola Olajire, said: “I know nothing about it. Contrary to widely-held assumption that the N750m NFF used to execute the competition was a special budget, it is understood that the said amount was actually 50 per cent of their total budget for 2013.”

In 2012 NFF had presented a budget of N4.8 billion to the Federal Government but it was slashed to N1.4bn.