NFF President, Ibrahim Gusau Stops Salaries Of Assistant Coaches

The Nigeria Football Federation President, Ibrahim Gusau, has decided to stop the payment of wages for assistant coaches in all national teams.

Ibrahim Gusau told reporters on Tuesday, that he had to make this decision due to the challenging economic climate in the country and to cut the cost of running the football body.

According to the football administrator, the assistant coaches will be granted “invitational allowance” henceforth.

Ibrahim Gusau said: “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.

“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 coach’s salary 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, that’s what we are looking at to manage the situation.”

The coaches of the Super Eagles and Super Falcons, among others, have often been singled out for criticism over the shortcomings of the NFF.

In the same vein, most of the coaches, especially the head coach of the Super Falcons, Randy Waldrum, publicly criticized the NFF over unpaid wages.

“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”, Ibrahim Gusau said.

“It’s the same problem with the Eaglets, they have five assistant coaches, I told them I cannot maintain such several coaches.”

He added: “I told all the head coaches nobody will choose their assistants for them because they are the ones I will hold responsible. If they appoint you as head coach, you must be given the privilege 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.”