As the Chairman of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) reconciliation Committee, I earlier today charged members of the All Nigerian Football Players Union (ANFPU) and the Professional Footballers Association of Nigeria (PFAN) to bury their differences to settle the lingering issues which have bedevilled the smooth running and progress of the union in the Country.
The 5-man players’ unions’ Reconciliation Committee as inaugurated by the NFF board, to look into the misunderstanding between the All Nigerian Football Players Union(ANFPU) and the Professional Footballers Association of Nigeria (PFAN) commenced the meeting yesterday, Wednesday 29th, 2023.
While speaking to members of the ANFPU and PFAN in Government House, I urged them to be united to be able to confront any issue and challenges facing both retired and active football players.
I’m happy to have them all here as we work together, collaborate and unite to fight our challenges to ensure we move forward as players and ex-players.
I informed them of our role as members of the committee – we are expected to work with members of the two Union and reconcile our differences as ex-players and have a strong union that will take care of all of us both retired and active players.
I pointed to the danger of not having a vibrant and active union to take care of players and ex-players as the challenges of not having a very formidable strong Union are enormous and will kill the fabric of players in Nigeria. We have more work to do. We are supposed to deal with those issues that affect us when we were playing to make sure that these young ones do not suffer the same fate.
As players, we must have a union that has both retired and active players. We must have a Union that will take up the responsibility of filing cases, paying the bills of players and preventing the physical molestation of players and ex-players. Also, it should be able to shield and protect them from signing fake or slave contracts. As leaders of a strong union, we should be able to deal with issues threatening to bring us down.
For the future of our young upcoming players, we have to be united and have a strong management players union to fill the gap, we are divided now and we need to be united for us to be able to produce an NFL president whenever the opportunity comes knocking.
I however used the medium to intimate the committee that Governor Obaseki’s administration has kept sports alive in the State by developing several sporting facilities across the State which led to the hosting of the Nigeria Sports Festival 2020.
As a Government, we will keep sports alive as we have developed various sporting facilities across the state to discover young talents. We have improved our sporting facilities including a standard swimming pool. This enabled the State to host the 20th National Sports Festival, Edo 2020.
We have also built 20 mini stadia across the 18 local government areas and most of them are almost completed. Some of them within Benin City are of natural grass but those built in Edo North and Central are artificial grass because of the hot weather condition.
Every Wednesday, there are sports activities in our schools which we have made part of the continuous assessment in schools across the State. This is aimed at catching them young as we work to bring sports alive in the State.
Other members of the Committee present include Mr Emmanuel Okala (MON); Dr Felix Owolabi-Akinloye (MON); Mr. Garba Lawal and the Secretary, Mr. Abdulrafiu Yusuf.
