Nigeria Coaches, NFF demand bribe for me to play for Super Eagles – Ex-Eaglet
A former top Nigerian player who dumped his nation to play for little-known Haiti, Emmanuel Sarki has revealed the reason why he couldn’t play for the Super Eagles.
Emmanuel Sarki was a contemporary of John Obi Mikel in the Golden Eaglets team that featured in the 2003 FIFA U-17 World Cup hosted by Finland.
Former U-17 colleague of Mikel John Obi and Chinedu Obasi Ogbuke, Emmanuel Sarki stated on live radio Berekete 101.1 Human Right Radio during the week that the reason he could not play for the Nigeria Senior National Team was because he refused to pay bribe to the Nigeria Football Federation.
He made this revelations from his Polish base when he called into the live show of human right with Ordinary President, Ahmed Isah which had in attendance former Super Eagles Goalkeeper, Emmanuel Babayaro and former England player, John Fashanu.
Sarki also use the opportunity to thank the Babayaros of their support towards his football career and family especially when he lost his brother.
Sarki, who at his peak was signed by Chelsea in 2006, resigned to fate of playing for little known, Haiti because his maternal grandfather was born there.
But the 31-year-old remains adamant, saying he has no regrets dumping Nigeria for Haiti.
It is not the first time former U-20 AFCON silver medalist that played alongside Brown Ideye and Elderson Elchiejile will be saying this as we also read in an interview published by the Scottish Sun few years ago where Sarki said he decided to snub Nigeria and play international football for Haiti instead because he got sick of being asked to pay up to £1,000 to play for the Super Eagles.
“I was told to pay before I am called up, that was when I was playing in Israel. I won’t mention the name of the coach,” he said.
“It was Efe Ambrose who gave me the contact of the coach after telling him of my form. I put a call across to him, but he told me to speak with his assistant, who openly asked me for money.
“A lot of friends asked me to pay the money, but the sum they were quoting was way more than what I can afford. I couldn’t pay it and despite my fine form, I wasn’t contacted again.”
Sarki played for the Flying Eagles, the Nigeria U-20 and the U-23 team but he never fulfilled his dream with the Super Eagles.
He said it is a different ball game with the Haiti national team where he has four international caps.
John Fashanu also revealed in the live Radio program that he still receives from England his monthly pension of 5 million naira till date.
The live program also had a session called “whistle blowing” which extensively and critically looked into the fraudulent activities carried out in the NFF the major focus was the sum of $2.295M Nigeria Football Federation received from World soccer governing body, FIFA for FAP (FIFA Assisted Program) which NFF could not account for.
SOURCE: operanews
