By Mark Baber
April 12 – Current Africa Cup of Nations champions Nigeria have announced they are to withdraw their national team from the 2014 African Nations Championship qualifiers due to the poor state of its finances.
The African Nations Championship exclusively features players from clubs in their domestic national championships and who are qualified to play in these leagues during the on-going season ie no players playing outside their country of registration qualify for their national teams in this competition.
The 2014 championship finals will be the third edition of the competition and will take place in South Africa and will feature 16 teams playing across four venues. Nigeria were scheduled to open their qualifying campaign against Ivory Coast between June 21-23.
Chairman of media and publicity for the Nigeria Football Federation Emeka Inyama said: “We have a lot of financial commitments and we have to look at the competitions in order of importance.”
“The federation is going through some financial difficulties because after the Nations cup, the federation’s monthly subvention fell from ₦162m ($1.03m) to ₦71m ($450,000) and the U-17 Morocco project will gulp ₦164m ($1.04m) which is our subvention for 2 months. So we must pull out from some championships otherwise the Federation will crumble.”
The decision means the Ivory Coast are through to the finals to be held in South Africa next year. Nigeria have failed to qualify for the two previous editions of the tournament, losing out to Ghana in 2009 and Niger in 2011.
In addition, the NFF are planning on slashing the winning bonus for coaches (except national team coach Stephen Keshi) and restructure their backroom staff.
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