”Come Out If You’re Owed” – NFF Tells Ex-coaches

The Nigeria Football Federation has issued a challenge to former coaches who were employed by them to make claims of debt, provided that they can demonstrate that they are owed money by the nation’s football governing body.

This is coming in the wake of the accusations that the NFF owed the late 1980 AFCON-winning captain Christian Chukwu the sum of $128,000.

Chukwu died on Saturday in Enugu at the age of 74, and an interview he gave in 2024, in which he accused the NFF of owing him, resurfaced.

In the wake of the allegations, NFF’s General Secretary, Dr Mohammed Sanusi, said there were no records of indebtedness to the coach, charging other coaches to come forward with their claims.

Sanusi claimed the NFF had since the first tenure of former president Amaju Pinnick (2014-2018), set up a committee to check their records for backlogs of salaries to former coaches but there was no record on Chukwu.

“There is no record in the NFF of any outstanding indebtedness to ‘Chairman’ Christian Chukwu. During the first term of the board headed by Mr Amaju Pinnick, a committee was set up to diligently peruse the papers of coaches who were being owed, even from previous NFF administrations,” Sanusi said.

“That committee was given the clear mandate to verify all debts and ensure that the coaches being owed were paid immediately. I am aware that the ‘Chairman’ was in the employ of the NFF between 2002 and 2005, before he was relieved of the post following the 1-1 draw with Angola in a FIFA World Cup qualifying match in Kano in August 2005. There is certainly no record of indebtedness to him in the NFF.”

Sanusi also challenged anyone with genuine and verifiable documents of NFF’s indebtedness to any coach, who has worked with any of the national teams over the past two decades, to come forward and tender those documents.

“As a credible organisation that is very much alive to its responsibilities, if we are confronted with any genuine document of indebtedness to any coach, we will offset the debt immediately.”

Aside from Chukwu, late coaches including former Super Falcons gaffer Godwin Izilein before his death in 2023 expressed displeasure over the NFF’s refusal to pay him his $12,000 for winning the 2004 WAFCON title.

In 2016, NFF’s Technical Director, Austin Eguavoen, also claimed that he was owed money by one of the previous administrations of the NFF.