Nigerian clubs are in danger of missing out on billions of Naira they would have earned from the transfer of players overseas should their financial records and documentations not be up-to-date.
This warning is coming from USA-based sports lawyer Pius Ndubuokwu.
Ndubuokwu has won landmark compensation cases at FIFA for former Super Eagles coach Emmanuel Amuneke as well as a growing list of league and non-league clubs in Nigeria.
He told SCORENigeria that it has now become an onerous task for Nigerian clubs to get training compensation and solidarity contributions through the FIFA clearing house, which now overseas this process other than the previous practice of clubs writing directly to buying clubs for these payments.
He stressed that clubs have to participate in a player’s passport, which is generated by the federation and which goes through the review, completion, validation and approval stages. Once it has got to the approval stage and you’re not keyed in, you are shut out.
He then said that the next procedure will be compliance and this has proved to be daunting for clubs to scale.
“Lack of documentations by African clubs has made it difficult to access these payments,” Ndubuokwu noted.
“In order to scale the compliance assessment by the clearing house, clubs will now have to start putting their documents in order, like ownership of the club, annual tax returns as well as having a lawyer on a retainer, who will help them navigate seamlessly through these processes.”
He also said clubs who have transferred players to countries where the electronic player registration system is not in place, they have to be proactive.
“They must contact the federation immediately after this transfer, because if they don’t, and an approval is got, you will be shut out from any rewards in this new system,” he pointed out,” he warned.
