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…says federation now to pay ‘invitational allowance’
’Tana Aiyejina
As part of cost-cutting measures following the country’s harsh economic conditions, President of the Nigeria Football Federation Ibrahim Gusau has cancelled salaries of assistant coaches in all the national teams, saying they will now be paid “invitational allowance” instead.
Gusau stated this while addressing journalists in Lagos on Tuesday.
“I told them (national team coaches) that for us to see that we manage this situation, we are only going to pay the senior coaches salaries, all other assistants will be engaged on invitational allowance, they should go and do other jobs,” Gusau said.
“We won’t put them on monthly salaries. We want to reduce that problem, so that at the end of the day I know if the coaches salaries is N10m and I have N50m, I know I can pay them for five months, not paying people for doing nothing. Even if you are the head coach of a team and you are working with another team where you are paid salaries, we are going to put you on allowance, not salary. In that case, if we are supposed to pay you N1m, we will pay you N500,000. So, thats what we are looking at to manage the situation.”
The country’s football chief added that because they were employed in large numbers, most of the assistant coaches were usually idle.
“Once you employ them they start making noise about their salary for doing nothing but most of the time you visit the teams training, you see the assistants just standing, doing nothing because the head coaches don’t believe in them.
“It’s the same problem with the Eaglets, they have five assistant coaches, I told them I cannot maintain such number of coaches.
Gusau stated that the head coaches of the other national teams now had the privilege to choose their assistants.
“I told all the head coaches nobody will choose their assistants for them because they are the ones I will hold responsible,” Gusau added. “If they appoint you as head coach, you must be given the privileged to choose your assistants because I don’t want you to complain to me.
“Only the senior coach would be appointed by the committee, but the assistants must be chosen by the coach because we are holding him responsible. Imagine, we have the highest record at U-17 level but we couldn’t even qualify for the last edition, that tells you there is a problem, which we need to work hard to correct.”
