Super Eagles’ Coach Stephen Keshi yesterday cried out over the disdain with which the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) is treating him by refusing to pay him for the past seven months.

Keshi, who is being owed about N35 million in salary arrears, poured out his heart in Abuja at the Home-based Super Eagles’ interactive session with the media ahead of the team’s upcoming international friendly with Jordan in Amman. Reacting to a statement credited to NFF Chairman Aminu Maigari that the allowances and bonuses the team’s coaches earn were enough to sustain them, Keshi said: “The lowest point of my career is working and not being paid for seven to eight months. I have never had this kind of experience before.”

Comparing the situation with what obtained when he coached the Malian and Togolese senior national football teams, the former Super Eagles captain said: “In Mali, they will never owe you. Your salary will hit your account before the end of every month. It was the same thing in Togo.

“Owing me up to seven months makes me feel I am not being appreciated. It is like they (my employers) think I am being favoured in what I am doing.

“I am not being favoured. Whatever I am doing here, I am doing it with everything I have and I need to be respected to be given my pay.”

He said it was unbelievable that he and his colleagues had worked without pay for about eight months out of the 24 months they have worked with the Super Eagles.

Keshi’s words: “I don’t like discussing about money issues and if there is any NFA member who said we can work for free, then I will want to speak with him face to face. If they say we can work for free and that they are not going to pay, so be it. I can’t have my family abroad and I will be in debt because I have not been paid for seven months and somebody is saying we should not complain.”

He regretted that the NFF appears not to be concerned about their plight “in spite of training under rain and sun to make Nigerians happy.”

•Photo shows Coach Keshi.

Update news