The League Management
Company (LMC) has said that a mandatory pension scheme for players in the Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) was underway.
The Chairman of the LMC, Nduka Irabor, gave this indication in an interview with newsmen in Abuja.
According to him, the new scheme will take care of the players’ retirement.
“We plan to introduce something very beneficial to the players themselves: mandatory savings; mandatory savings that will be managed by fund managers not their managers or LMC managers.
“We want to create some kind of bridging pension for the players. They are workers like those of you in government establishments.
“But, they play for 10 years, 15 years and they retire into penury; that won’t happen.
“We will create a special kind of pension for them that their employers and they themselves will contribute as expected by the law.
“So, let’s take care of their welfare before we talk about the razzmatazz,’’ Irabor said.
He said that players in the country’s elite league would henceforth be celebrated even after they had retired from professional football, adding that the league existed because of them.
“We are celebrating them; that is why we are worried about the efficacy of payments to them and we plan to monitor their payments.
“We have first of all raised their minimum wage to N150,000 a month and in some cases we have done more than 200 per cent increase in some of the existing salaries.
“We know that their tenure is short; so, if they put in 10 years or 15 years in football they should be able to get their gains,’’ Irabor added.
The NPFL was recently adjudged the fourth strongest league in Africa and 53rd in the World following some of the reforms introduced by the LMC within one year in office.
The verdict which was made by the International Federation of Football History and Statistics (IFFHS) rated Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco as Africa’s first, second and third strongest leagues respectively.