Siasia faces NFF’s hammer over Japanese largesse

Top officials of the Nigeria Football Federation are set to hand National U-23 coach Samson Siasia a query over the team’s decision to share the $390,000 gift from Japanese plastic surgeon, Katsuya Takasu, for winning the bronze medal at the just-concluded Rio Olympics.

The officials maintained that the team had no right to share such gift without the approval of the soccer house according to tradition.

The Japanese fan wrote out two Citibank cheques – $200,000 in favour of coach Siasia and $190,000 in favour of Mikel Obi.

A team meeting had already resolved that both players and officials would receive equal amount of the cash with Mikel himself agreeing to give part of his own share for the chief coach (Siasia) to get more than the rest of the squad.

It was further gathered that the sharing formula agreed was a flat rate for the 22 players (18 accredited players and four alternate players) and 10 officials.

But Siasia is expected to come forward and submit details of what transpired in their training camp in Atlanta and the technical report of the matches in Rio,” the source added.

It would be recalled that former Super Eagles goalkeeper and media officer, Idah Peterside, had tweeted that: “the money from the Japanese man to the team has been hijacked by the NFA (he meant NFF),” but NFF President Amaju Pinnick saying the allegation was mischievous while insisting they were merely conducting an integrity test on the donation and the donor.

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