President of the Nigeria Football Federation, Amaju Pinnick has admitted that the Super Eagles are attending Sunday’s Fifa 2018 World Cup qualifier against Zambia in Ndola due to financial challenges.
After refuting early claims on this, the NFF boss told the senate committee on sports that the body need government intervention to prosecute the game.
“The draw was done for 20 teams that we qualify for the final phase of the World Cup and Nigeria was drawn against Zambia, Cameroon that has won the Nations Cup and attended the World Cup seven times,” Pinnick said.
“Algeria is the highest rank team in Africa. Is a group that goes beyond the group of death. The good news is that we have sound technical crew and a lot of players doing well.
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“But the missing link is our financial incapacitation which activates all we do on and off the field.
“Before now we have done a request to government for intervention because funds were not coming from our sponsors because it is been very difficult for them so they claimed and so we did not have any choice than to resort to writing to the government.
“So we are awaiting a response from them and the game is just in five days. We’ve put all arrangement on ground already.
“We have discussed with Arik to go on a chartered flight and we are also about sending somebody to Ndola because there is a new hotel we have secured in Ndola but we could not pay for it.
“We have been about to secure about 60 rooms but we could not buy their ticket because we own our traveling agent about 300 million naira.
“So there is no way we could get it and we have to request the players to come with economy tickets in reflection of what is happening to our economy and eighty percent of them obliged our request,” he concluded.
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