Five Falcons Players Cry Out Over Unpaid World Cup Bonus

Five Falcons Players Cry Out Over Un0aid World Cup Bonus

By Admin

Three months after participating in the showpiece in France, some members of the Nigeria's Super Falcons are yet to receive their entitlements.

Five players of the Nigeria women's team are owed bonuses and allowances worth 7,700,000 million naira [$22,000] for playing at the Women's World Cup in France , Goal can exclusively report.

The affected players are goalkeeper Chiamaka Nnadozie, defender Chidinma Okeke, forwards Ogonna Chukwudi, Alice Ogebe and Chinwendu Ihezuo.
While the team await their share of one million dollars, Nigeria's Women's World Cup appearance fee, Goal understands the five players are yet to get their bonuses three months after the event.

In June, Goal reported that the Super Falcons had staged a sit-in protest in Grenoble over unpaid entitlements following a Round of 16 defeat to Germany.
In response then, Amaju Pinnick the president of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) said they have offset all the outstanding allowances.

Meanwhile, players told Goal they were each owed $3000 for winning bonus against South Korea and $1400 for accumulated daily allowances.

"This thing happened since June 14th when we are in France, NFF said they want to pay $4400 which $3000 is for winning bonus and $1400 is for daily allowances for each player," an unnamed player told Goal .
"They [NFF] said we should submit our dollar account, we are five that don’t have a dollar account, so we call our people at home to help us open the account.
"They [NFF] also said we should not worry about that as they will pay it into Desire Oparanozie [then captain] account and we said okay no problem.

"But when they were doing the payment they pay Desire only her money which we ask them why they didn’t pay us through Desire’s account as they promised.
"They said the accountant said that he or she wants to pay it into our own different account that we should submit our account information which we did on 23th of June.
"Since then till date what we have been hearing is that they will pay it until now we haven’t received any money from them reach today."

In defence, an NFF official explained the reasons behind the three-month-long delay after admitting the unpaid entitlements to the five players.

"The payment didn’t come from the NFF France allocation but was sourced from sponsors fund," an NFF official told Goal .
"The delay happened because we don't have the said account so it has to be treated separately afresh.
"But a mistake was made to have sent only account numbers without payment instruction.

"Later it was discovered several weeks after and has to be changed. Now the sponsors have to authorized the payment."

The wait to secure their entitlements continues for the affected players, with Okeke and Nnadozie involved in Nigeria's Olympic qualifier doubleheader against Cote d'Ivoire.

Nigeria are bidding to return to the Women's Olympic Games in Tokyo next year after missing back-to-back events, at London 2012 and Rio 2016