Taraba Utd: How not to treat professional footballers
By Adebayo Olodan
The sports media was awash at the weekend with news of the passing of Fiorentina skipper, Davide Astori. The 31-year-old died in his sleep at his hotel room in Florence, on Sunday. His lifeless body was discovered around 9:30am by club therapist and teammates after he failed to turn up for breakfast or respond to phone calls.
In Astori’s honour, Serie A chiefs postponed last weekend matches and rescheduled them for April 3 and 4. In addition, Fiorentina and his former club, Cagliari, retired the No 13 jersey worn by their diligent captain and also gave him a post-mortem life contract with the proceeds to be given to his partner, Francesca Fioretti and two-year-old daughter, Vittoria.
Such has been the opulence footballers and their relatives enjoy in Europe.
The same can however not be said of our domestic league players who are consistently treated like ‘lepers’ in their own country.
An example that readily comes to mind is the Taraba FC saga. Governor Darius Ishaku made the headlines for the wrong reasons following last Friday’s arrest of players of the disbanded Taraba FC and Taraba Queens – the two state-owned football clubs.
The players were said to have disrupted the training of the club at the Jalingo Stadium, but they were later released by the police.
Recall that Ishaku irrationally disbanded the two clubs in November 2017 after several protests by the former players over unpaid 18 months’ salaries and allowances.
Before their disbandment, the players last year protested against the state government’s failure to pay them their backlog with some of them brutalised by policemen while marching through the streets of Jalingo to the Government House.
One of the players during the one-week sit out at the entrance of the Government House, reportedly lost his son as he could not pay hospital bills.
However, after negotiations with some officials of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Nigerian Professional Footballers officials, the players were paid part of the salaries from the N16m released by Governor Ishiaku.
Rather than offsetting the remaining backlog, Ishiaku disbanded the teams after a committee constituted discovered irregularities in the running of the clubs. The government subsequently went ahead to recruit new players from the state’s 17 local government areas of the state to prepare ahead of the 2017/18 Nigeria National League (NNL) season.
The development did not go down well with the former players who stormed the Jalingo stadium to halt the club’s training last Tuesday.
Some officials were said to have invited security operatives to disperse the aggrieved players but the players remained adamant and returned to the stadium to stop the team’s training on Friday despite the presence of policemen.
According to reports, there were two police patrol vans at the stadium meant to stop the players from disrupting the training. The policemen were said to have called for backup because of the large number of the embittered players. But when the training started, the aggrieved players went in peacefully and asked the new ones to stop training until their outstanding salaries were paid.
Surprisingly, the misinformed policemen ended up arresting some of the distressed players.
The policemen were misinformed by the clubs management that the players wanted to cause trouble after being paid.
Speaking on the plight of her colleagues, Taraba Queens player, Grace Chijioke, said they have been living at the mercy of some Jalingo indigenes.
“It is really sad that we are yet to get what the government promised us. Most of us are not from the state and we cannot go to other teams because we need money to travel,” she said.
“Some good people here have been helping us with what they have. The government should listen to us and pay us so that we can leave.”
How does footballers expressing their grievances over several months unpaid salaries ended up being treated like criminals? These are people, who for several months travelled long distance virtually every week to honour matches, played on empty stomachs and sometimes put their lives on the line to represent the club.
The same management that could not pay those lads for almost two years went ahead to hire new players. You may ask whether the newcomers will represent the club for the entire NNL season without being paid a dime.
It is even more disheartening when I heard the club Secretary and other officials of Taraba FC told the aggrieved players that they have no right to stop the team’s training. The officials rather directed the players to the same Commissioner for Sports, who has failed to attend to them since 2017. It is only in this part of the world you hear such tales.
Except the League Management Company (LMC) under the leadership of Shehu Dikko melt out heavy sanction to clubs for owing their players and officials, we will continue to have similar scenario in our league. With salaries and bonuses of players infrequent for reasons best known to club administrators, domestic league players will continue to drift en mass to obscure leagues in Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Malta and Finland among others.
Beyond the two months salaries paid last year, the players claimed they were yet to receive anything from the state government, despite several pleas.
To deter other clubs, the LMC must compel Taraba FC and Taraba Queens to pay the outstanding 16 months salaries owed the players. The National Association of Nigerian Professional Footballers must also rise in support of their compatriots. Until those clubs are able to offset their backlog, they should not be allowed to participate in the domestic league. Only states that are financially buoyant enough should be allowed to register club(s) in the league.