Presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 election, Mr. Peter Obi, has said that the nation’s senior soccer team, the Super Eagles, which is presently part of the on-going African Nations Cup (AFCON) campaign, does not deserve the international embarrassment of the news of unpaid march bonuses.
There have been reports of unease in the camp of the Super Eagles, which is scheduled to play one of the quarter final matches of the tournament, which is taking place in Morocco, on Saturday.
The players are said to have threatened not to go ahead with the competition if the already agreed bonuses for the matches they have already played and won, which are being owed them, are not paid up.
Mr. Obi, a former Governor of Anambra State and now a chieftain of the opposition African Democratic Congress (ADC), in an X (former Twitter) post, titled “When will this embarrassment end?,” decried the non payment of the previously agreed match bonuses of the team.
He said: “Can we get through a day without troubling news in this country? At a time when Nigerians need joy and unity—something the national football team, the Super Eagles, has been providing by winning matches and lifting our spirits worldwide—these same players are being denied their basic match allowances.
“A country that writes off trillions in debts for government agencies and political allies, and squanders money on grandiose, self-serving projects, now struggles to pay the basic match bonuses owed to our players.”
Though there were stories, at the time of filing this report, of efforts being made to pay the outstanding bonuses, Obi stressed in his post that “Nigeria deserves a better international image than this ongoing failure to honor previously agreed-upon allowances ..” insisting that the “Super Eagles do not deserve this embarrassment or the avoidable distractions ahead of a crucial quarter-final match. Nigeria must learn to fulfill its obligations.”
