Taraba Palava: The Half Bread Just Got Worst

After my last article concerning government owing workers salary I made a vow not to write anything concerning that kind of situation but after reading what is currently happening to the players of Tabara Football Club, I would be inhuman to ignore the situation that why I have decided once again to bring out the activist in me via my writing skills to address the issue.
Let me quickly paint the picture for those you that still haven’t heard about the issue, players of Tabara FC are been owned 12months salary by the state government and there have been a massive protest by the player as they have camped outside the government in Taraba yet nothing has been done. I was listening to a sport programme on radio when I heard that one of the players just lost his daughter due to the fact that he couldn’t afford to buy drugs for the girl that wasn't feeling too well.

It is no news that most of the football clubs in Nigeria are owned and controlled by state government and this automatically makes the player’s workers of the government in other words they are also civil servant. Like I said in my previous article, as civil servant we have the right to hold the government to a ransom if government fails to honour the agreement we entered when they decided to employ you. By holding them to ransom what I mean is that, once the players notice that their weekly/monthly salary isn’t coming then they should also stop playing football. In football there is always a documented contract which states in details the transaction between the player and his club, that is if for example if Taraba FC is signing a player, there would be a written contract that states where the player is been bought, how much the player would cost and how much the player would earn and the mode of payment (please correct me if I am wrong) and what this means is that the owner or whoever controls the club has a legal binding responsibility to the player they are singing.

Though I am no lawyer but I did a little bit of law and I was able to learn that when there is a written contract between two parties and one party breaches that contract the other party has the right to sue which to me that's the best option for the players of Tabara football club but once again this is Nigeria where we don't take football matters to court and even if you do, you might just end up spending more money in court than what you are suing for. This is why the players decided to go protest at the state's government house but it is alarming and pathetic to know that the governor that is suppose to pay them doesn’t even give a damn about this people. Now I would ask again, why wait this long to carry out this protest? When are we going to realize that the half bread in the saying “half bread is better than none” won’t always be available and that we have to stop the medicine after death action we always take. Football is a big business which would bring in a lot of returns if good investment is made but how do you expect players that haven’t been paid salary for 12month to win a match let alone draw a match. Why do you think player like John Terry and Sergio Ramos just but to mention a few who would want to die on the pitch, it is because they are been well paid and because they are not in debt to anybody. But that is not the case of Nigerian players we have plenty football clubs that owe their players yet these player are still putting on the shirt of their club because they believe that one day they would pay them forgetting the fact that when they signed the contract it wasn't written that they would be owing them salaries. I am not going to go into what the League Management Company (LMC) should do because I also learnt that they are more like figure head, they still bow down to another government agency that's the Nigeria Football Federation and this means that no matter what policies they come up with, if it doesn’t go well with the N.F.F they would still have to go back on it.

For the player that lost his daughter, please accept my condolence as I pray that God gives you the strength to bear the loss. I would also advice you to sue the governor of Tabara the man that was suppose to pay you on the charge of first degree Manslaughter. Yes you read it right, the governor of Taraba should be charge to court for Manslaughter simply because he didn't pay one of his workers and that action had led to the death of that workers daughter because he couldn’t afford to buy the drug the girl need to cure herself.