NFF casts doubts over NPL congress, kick-off date

NFF President, Aminu Maigari

Fresh indications have emerged that the Nigeria Premier League (NPL) Congress earlier slated for Saturday, November 17 in Kano might not hold as scheduled.

Our correspondent gathered that the NFF has washed its hands off the Congress which it claims not to be aware of. The NFF claims it has not been officially notified of the gathering which it has to sanction and also believes that the NPL still has too many outstanding issues that needs to be resolved before the Congress can hold.

“NPL has not notified us officially about that Nov 17 congress, so we are not aware of it. NPL still has a lot of issues to resolve,” a top NFF official was quoted as saying on Monday.

This development automatically threatens the December 1 kick-off date of the 2012/2013 NPL season that was previously announced by the NPL.

This situation is made even worse as clubs are not taking the NPL seriously too. Sources close to the NPL confirmed that only one club met the November 9 deadline given by the league body for the registration of players for the 2012/2013 season. As it stands, 19 clubs are yet to respond to the directive that is quite crucial to the kick off of the new season.

Meanwhile, the government of Rivers State has said that it would pay up all the outstanding fees owed to players and managers of Dolphins FC.

Speaking on behalf of the government, Sports Commissioner, Fred Igwe revealed that the payments would be made sometime between Monday and Friday this week.