Stephen Keshi
The
Super Eagles on Thursday refused to leave for South Africa where they
were expected to catch a connecting flight to Brazil for the FIFA
Confederations Cup which starts on Saturday.
The team missed their flight to
Johannesburg on Thursday; they had booked to fly on a South African
airline SA75 and would have arrived in Sao Paolo on Thursday evening.
The Nigerian squad will now travel to
Brazil on Saturday despite the dispute about bonus payments, FIFA
general secretary Jerome Valcke confirmed late on Thursday.
Valcke said he had been given assurances
that Stephen Keshi’s side would fly out ahead of their opening Group B
game with Tahiti in Belo Horizonte on Monday.
“I spoke with the team manager and they
will be in a plane on Saturday and will be at the Confederations Cup, so
the issue is solved,” he said.
Nigeria’s Group B match with Tahiti
holds on Monday but the Eagles refused to leave their Namibia hotel on
Thursday, protesting a 50 per cent slash in their match bonuses after
beating Kenya 1-0 in Nairobi last week and playing a 1-1 draw with
Namibia on Wednesday.
The players insisted that the new bonus regime is inappropriate and unacceptable.
Each player was initially getting $5,000
for a draw and $10,000 for a win before the restructuring in the
remuneration package due to the poor financial status of the Nigeria
Football Federation.
The players had rejected the $5,000 win bonus for beating Kenya in Nairobi last week.
All efforts by Keshi and his assistants
to convince the players to shift ground failed as the team threatened
not to honour the Confederations Cup.
The officials of the Nigeria Football
Federation had left Windhoek as early as 5am on Thursday so there were
no administrative personnel on ground to address the problem. But it was
learnt that NFF president, Aminu Maigari, met players at their hotel to
explain why the football body had to make cuts to its expenditure.
“They are declining to leave,” Namibia Football Association general secretary Barry Rukoro told Reuters.
“They were supposed to go at 11 am this morning but they say they are
owed money by their association and want it sorted before they will
leave the hotel.
“Their officials all departed on an
earlier flight this morning but the players and the technical staff are
still here. So far there is no indication they are leaving.”
Should Nigeria fail to make an
appearance at the Confederations Cup, it would be the first time any
team would boycott the tournament since it began in 1992.
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