Two members of Nigeria’s Super Eagles’ squad to the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, Uche Nwofor and Michael Uchebo have accused Portuguese football club Boavista of treating them like slaves.
In a series of tweets by BBC’s Oluwashina Okeleji, via his twitter handle @oluwashina the players’ stories were told.
According to the posts, the two forwards were approached by their clubs and asked to take a paycut at the beginning of the 2016/17 season. They refused, leading the Boavista President to give an instruction that they be completely isolated.
Consequently, Uchebo and Nwofor were ‘barred from the club’s training ground, shunned at team gatherings and isolated from training with the rest of the team.’
When the two Nigerians attempted to use the club facilities, they were turned back by security men acting on the orders of the Boavista President.
Uche Nwofor, in an attempt to salvage his career asked that his contract be terminated, which the club agreed to. He was due a €110,000 compensation which the President Alvara Braga, refused to pay. It was discovered by Nwofor’s handlers and FIFPro that Boavista misled the League body by only registering the contract termination and leaving out the payment of the compensation.
The deadline for the payment of the compensation has since elapsed with Boavista refusing to pay and refusing to respond to Nwofor’s call to have them pay him the said amount.
According to one of the player’s representatives, Kobe Benson, “the club is a notoriously dishonest side with no respect for FIFA rules/regulations. No options but to report them to the authorities. With the amount of evidence, I have no doubt that they will be punished severely.”
Benson also said that the club will be made to pay the entirety of Uchebo’s contract as well as Nwofor’s compensation.
In the words of Uche Nwofor, he described Boavista as ‘gangsters who force you to take a pay cut or force you out’ and that such a thing wouldn’t happen in the Netherlands and Belgium, countries where he had previously played professional football.
He described it as slavery and that they had to keep evidence as both men haven’t been paid for months.
The Portuguese league body allows Boavista to get away with such deplorable acts & allow them sign players even though they owe Nwofor & Uchebo. The club was punished & relegated in 2008 by the league body for gross misconduct. It appears that punishment did nothing to change them.
Oluwashina Okeleji said he spoke to the club administrator, Diogo Braga some months ago who requested that he send a mail. The man never replied. He also said there were damning videos which show the atrocious behaviour of Boavista officials, and some of them are on his twitter timeline.
Michael Uchebo has been threatened with eviction by his landlord for failing to pay his rent and the club haven’t paid any of his electricity, water and tax bills.
Boavista have breached FIFA rules by not honouring the contracts signed by these players, seeing as they were the ones who offered them the contracts in the first place.
In addition, it is against FIFA rules to have a professional footballer train on his own without a personal trainer, a doctor and a physiotherapist.
The International Federation of Professional Footballers (FIFPro) have confirmed that they are looking into the matter and will help the players get justice
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