LMC Staff Writes Minister of Sports Over Backlog Of Unpaid Salaries

LMC Staff Writes Minister of Sports Over Backlog Of Unpaid Salaries

Ibraheem Lateef Ayodele

Employees of the League Management Company (LMC) have made a Save Our Soul plea to the Minister of Sports and Youth Development, Sunday Dare regarding their backlog of unpaid salaries, BSNSports.coming reports.

In a letter dated 11th October 2022 and addressed to the Minister, was with the title: COMPLAINT ABOUT UNPAID SALARIES, BENEFITS AND REDUNDANCY OF SOME MEMBERS OF STAFF.

According to them, we write to commend the Honourable Minister of Sports Mr Sunday Dare on the recent positive development and happenings around sports in general and specifically football administration that recently led to the composition of an interim management committee to run the affairs of the Nigeria professional football league (NPFL) which originally is known as Nigeria Football League (NFL) trading as Nigeria Premier League (NPL).

This indeed is a step in the right direction.

Having said this, however, we the undersigned original confirmed members of staff of The Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) that were rendered redundant and whose salaries and benefits were withheld for no reason whatsoever, by the officials of the League Management Company led by Mr Shehu Dikko and Mr Salisu Abubakar have the following complaints and demands;

First of all, we are bonafide members of staff of the Nigerian Professional Football League with an employment letter and confirmation letter.

We were all co-opted into the LMC arrangement verbally without any correspondence such as a letter of neither engagement nor a company identity card albeit we were been paid our salaries with our job description and responsibilities usurped by officials of the LMC preparatory to a premeditated redundancy lacuna.

Gradually henceforth, salaries of individual staff were been stopped tactically for no reasons whatsoever without any notice or explanations.

This caused untold hardship, unmitigated health challenges and death for some members of the staff.

As a result of this redundancy and nonpayment of salaries, we lost our accommodation.

Our children and wards were thrown out of their schools for lack of school fees.

Some ran into health challenges and even death because of the suspension of health insurance coverage.

Our pension contribution was suspended.

Our tax remittance was suspended, housing allowances were not paid and our leave allowances were also not paid.

In light of the above, we are appealing passionately to the Honourable Minister of Sports, Mr Sunday Dare as a father and leader to look into our plight with compassion and address this anomaly once and for all in the following areas;

We have been trained and have worked as foundation members of staff of the Nigerian Professional Football League and contributed to growing the league into what it became.

We commit to the fact that we love our profession and our jobs with passion and wish to come back to our duty post.

In terms of the welfare and the well-being of these members of staff of the Nigerian Professional Football League, we appeal to the Honorable minister to empathise with our plights in addressing the under-listed request.

Our outstanding salary arrears and allowances should be paid to us to ameliorate our sufferings.

Restoration of our Health Insurance coverage, remittance of our accumulated pension contribution and remittance of our withheld personal income tax of the under-listed members of staff.

In conclusion, we would like to emphasize that these members of staff of the Nigeria Professional League (NPFL) rendered redundant for just no cause by the management of the dissolved LMC, have gone through a lot of sufferings in the past years. In light of the above, we are looking forward to the Honorable Minister of Sports taking swift and positive action on our request.

Attached to the letter was the breakdown of the salary arrears of the affected members of staff.”

Efforts to reach Shehu Dikko to react to the allegations proved abortive, as he was yet to pick up calls or respond to SMS and WhatsApp messages sent at the time of filing the report.