The Chairman of Interim Management committee (IMC) Hon. Gbenga Elegbeleye has reiterated that the target of the committee is to ensure that Nigeria Premier League (NPL) is rated among the best leagues in the continent of Africa.
The IMC Chairman lamented that the Nigeria league is currently not rated among the 10 best leagues in Africa adding that the league management body is working day and night to ensure the loss glory of the NPL is restored.
Speaking on Wednesday in Abuja during the performance appraisal of the season for the league, Hon Elegbeleye said they identified three factors that needed urgent attention if the league must be stabilised.
According to him, to achieve the Interim committee’s desire of having the best league in Africa, they needed to fix three most important (out of other challenges) identified challenges among which are: taking good care of the match officials, giving N10m to each NPL clubs as takeoff grants and timely sanction on erring clubs.
He said, “The reason for the emergence of the IMC is as a result of failure of old system, if you check the latest CAF ranking domestic league in Africa, Nigeria is not among the best 10 league country in Africa, a country with about 200 million people, the largest country in Africa in terms of population, the largest exports of footballer in Africa is not part of the first 10 there must be something wrong.
“Owing officials has not been the case with the new committee as we pay on time, we increased their emoluments by 50% Transport allowance by 40% and again where ever they go to officiate all these allowances paid a day before the match, so we wouldn’t have the reasons to owe Referees like they did in the past, where Referees have been owed three years.
“Secondly, when they go to officiate, despite all these increments in their emoluments and transport allowance, we paid for their accommodation, and still pay for their feeding anywhere they go.
“Not only that, make sure that there is prompt punishment for any club that causes trouble during the game by deducting 3 points, all those actions are the reason behind the league improvement and we will not relent our effort to ensure NPL rank the best in Africa.”
“Also, don’t forget that we gave all the 20 clubs N200m as take off grants before the league kicked off. This is to ease the financial burdens they might be facing at that time.”
The Former National Sports Commission Director General then called on all stakeholders for the moral support of the citizenry to make the aspirations of the IMC come true for the NPL.
