18th November, 2021
By Ismaila Chafe/Abuja
The Minister of Youth and Sports, Sunday Dare, said the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) will decide the fate of Super Eagles Head Coach, Gernot Rohr next week.
Dare stated this on Thursday at the weekly ministerial briefing organised by the Presidential Communications team at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
According to the minister, Rohr’s future with the Super Eagles will depend on a report to be submitted by the NFF in the coming days.
“Once we have national matches like these, there is an operating procedure.
“First, the NFF will receive a technical report that analyses the game. And based on that, we will review, scrutinise and benchmark the report. Thereafter it will make a decision either about the players or about the coaching staff.
“The ministry is waiting for that report from the NFF. What it will contain or recommend, I cannot say for now. Before the end of the week, we’ll have that report and it will touch on many areas.”
“We know what the concerns are. We’ll do whatever is necessary and we’ll be timely about it to make sure Nigeria’s football is of the highest quality and that we’ll play in Qatar,” he added.
Speaking on athletes’ welfare, the minister revealed that his ministry had tripled its remunerations to athletes representing the country in various global tournaments including the Olympics.
He, however, disclosed that the ministry still owes 54 athletes a total of N44.37m in bonuses and remunerations.
“For the first time in a long time, we have decided to triple the bonuses for the athletes. We tripled their bonuses too.
“We also moved away from just giving them naira to giving them dollars because when you check other countries and what they pay their athletes, they pay in dollars.
“The Paralympians who won 10 medals, less than eight weeks after they returned, we paid them a bonus of 15,000 dollars for gold, 10,000 dollars for silver and 7,500 dollars for bronze.
“We still have a few outstanding; we have a balance of 2,000 dollars to pay to about 54 athletes. And that’s because I increased their allowances from 3,500 dollars to 6,000 dollars at the Olympics.
“So, we had to rework our budgets and we are almost there. As we speak $4,000 has been paid to all of them. The 2,000 dollars will be available soon,” he said.