President of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), Ibrahim Gusau, has debunked claims that the Super Eagles are owed a backlog of match bonuses stretching to about 30 games.
In an interview released by Elegbete TV on Wednesday, Gusau explained that the NFF had cleared all outstanding monies due to the team, while their bonuses for the World Cup qualifiers have also been agreed.
The Super Eagles boycotted training in Rabat, Morocco, on Tuesday, ahead of their crucial 2026 World Cup African playoffs semi-final against Gabon on Thursday.
Both parties, however, reached a compromise on Wednesday as the team returned to training ahead of the crucial playoffs.
Nigeria will face Gabon at the Complexe Sportif Prince Heritier Moulay Al Hassan in Rabat on Thursday (today), with the winner to face either DR Congo or Cameroon, who will also square up against each other today as well.
Initial reports from the team’s camp said players and officials skipped what would have been their second training session in protest of unpaid bonuses, which date back to 2019.
While it was also reported that the players wanted $15,000 each for each of the playoffs, and that the NFF proposed $10,000, captain William Troost-Ekong dismissed the claims, maintaining that the team was focused on the games ahead.
‘Once a resolution is found, we will be the first to confirm. Any other statement/claim or especially demands other than the rightful request written about is FALSE’, Troost-Ekong said.
‘All we want and continue to do is focus on the big games ahead’.
In the wake of the saga, Gusau countered the captain’s claims.
‘It’s not true that we have owed for 30 matches’, Gusau told Elegbete TV.
‘Immediately after the AFCON last year, we sat down with the leaders of the team and we negotiated. I told them ‘I didn’t want us to go into the World Cup qualifiers with any issues of money. Can we please sit down and agree on what your outstanding is?’ Please, this is what we can do to make sure we clear that. Let us go on a clean sheet to face the qualifiers’, and we have reached an agreement with them’, the NFF president told Elegbete TV.
‘So, before we came back to this year’s qualifiers, we reached an agreement with them and everything was cleared. So, if there is any outstanding we have with the Super Eagles, it has to do with the qualifiers, and these qualifiers we are playing we the NFF and the National Sports Commission have reached an agreement with them. It’s not an issue of after the match we give you a match bonus, let’s go if we qualify, we are giving you so so amount of money.
‘So, it’s not an issue of after every match; this is the match bonus we are going to give you, and they agreed. So anytime they are coming now, we just give them an appearance fee, which we have been doing through the National Sports Commission’.
Following their agreement, the Super Eagles will go into today’s game with just one training session as a complete squad, as only 14 members of the team were involved in their first training session on Monday.
Having missed out on the automatic qualifying ticket, the Super Eagles are fighting the odds of missing back-to-back FIFA World Cups through the playoffs.
If they claim the African ticket, they will proceed to the intercontinental playoffs in Mexico, where two tickets will be available for grabs in the tournament billed for Mexico.
