AFCON 2013: Nigeria yet to receive $1.5m prize money from CAF

Reports say the Confederation of African Football (CAF) is yet to release the cash award to the Super Eagles of Nigeria, winners of the 2013 African Cup of Nations.

As earlier announced by CAF, a prize money $1.5M (N238m) was to be awarded to the winners of AFCON 2013. Nigeria defeated Burkina Faso on February 10, winning the competition.

And to confirm this, CAF openly handed the Super Eagles a dummy cheque, indicating the total cash prize due to the winners. So far, the Nigeria Football Federation says that’s the only cheque they have in their possession.

Dr. Shehu Adamu, an NFF board member confirmed this to THISDAY on Monday night that the ‘Glasshouse’ was yet to receive the prize money from CAF two weeks after the competition.

‘We have not received any alert from CAF regarding the Africa Cup of Nations prize money. We have sent our account number to them and the money is yet to hit the account. We are still waiting for them to pay the money’, Adamu said.

Other reports say CAF is ‘playing hide and seek’ by delaying the prize money redemption as a strategy to make Nigeria pay the disputed TV rights fee of 8.5m euros (over N1 billion) which CAF President Issa Hayatou claimed Nigeria was owing to the confederation over the broadcast of the Africa Cup of Nations.

The refusal of Nigeria to pay the huge rights fees demanded by CAF agents, resulted in the non-telecast of the Africa Cup of Nations matches on local television stations, prompting Nigerians to watch the matches on pay per view television.

An email sent to CAF had not be replied as at the time of this report.

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