Former Super Eagles coach, Christian Chukwu, has once again called out the Nigeria Football Federation over his unpaid salaries 19 years after he vacated his role as the team’s head coach, The PUNCH reports.
Chukwu made this assertion during an interview with the Athletic Nigeria on Monday where he talked on ranging issues of poor treatment of the ingenious coaches by the country’s football governing body.
The 73-year-old head coach of the country’s men’s senior national team between 2002 and 2005 led Nigeria to a bronze medal finish at the 2004 Africa Cup of Nations in Tunisia before he was relieved of his job in 2005 during the qualification campaign for the 2006 World Cup in Germany.
In 2014, nine years after he quit the Eagles job, the ‘Chairman’ as he is fondly called, lamented how he was still been owed by the federation.
Again, Chukwu expressed displeasure at the NFF after failing to pay him his outstanding salaries, adding that several other late coaches’ were also being owed.
“They owe Nigerian coaches. They don’t owe foreign coaches. It is a problem because they know them. You take on an indigenous coach who takes a cheap salary, and you owe him,” Chukwu said.
“Is it proper? Are you encouraging him to do his job? I am still owed up till today. They still owe me till tomorrow. My files are there with the NFF.
What can I do? There is nothing I can do to get them to pay me. The file is there. Go to their office, and you will see how much they owe me. Not only me, but other indigenous coaches are being owed too. Some are late.
“They are owing us because we are Nigerians, when I was in Kenya I was not owed and when I went to Lebanon I was not owed there and you can see the difference. We did our best and those people appreciated us.”
Asked if it is a price to pay for serving his country, the former Eagles captain said, “If it is a price I think the nation should have paid me and not me paying the nation, for serving the nation and serving them well. I think I should be paid and not them owing me.”
He added that he would be glad if the current NFF president, Ibrahim Gusau, would consider paying him.
“It is my money lying down there for nothing, I will go and discuss everything with him (Gusau), and if he pays me that is wonderful.”
In 2019, Chukwu, who captained the national team to their first-ever Africa Cup of Nations title on home soil in 1980, suffered prostate cancer, which affected his leg.
The family opened a GoFundMe appeal to solicit funds for the Nigeria football legend’s medical treatment before billionaire businessman, Femi Otedola, donated N18m to cover his treatment abroad.
Aside from captaining Nigeria to her first AFCON success in 1980, he also led Enugu Rangers to win the Africa Cup Winners Cup in 1977.
Chukwu also served as assistant coach of the first team to win a FIFA World Cup trophy for Nigeria – the Golden Eaglets that triumphed at the FIFA U-17 World Cup in China in 1985.
He was also assistant coach of the team tagged the ‘Golden Generation’ – the 1994 class of Super Eagles that qualified Nigeria for their first FIFA World Cup finals.
