Izuchukwu Okosi
Some unnamed Ghana national team coaches have expressed disbelief and disappointment at the poor payment they receive from the Ghana Football Association.
The coaches according to reports from sources in Ghana, want the FA and the Ministry of Youth and Sports to expedite work on proposed contracts to enable them to concentrate fully and do their best for the teams.
One of Ghana’s leading sports publication, The Graphic Sports reports that apart from head coaches of the Black Stars and the Black Queens, all the other national team coaches are working without binding contracts with the GFA.
A number of coaches disclosed to the Graphic Sports that last month they were paid some stipends which was as low as GH₵4000 while their assistants got much less after working for more than a year.
One of the coaches lamented the poor treatment meted out to them and implored the FA to immediately draft a contract for them to know how much they are entitled to at the end of every month.
“Since we were appointed, nobody has been paid until last month when we were given something small. We don’t have a contract and we don’t know how much they are supposed to pay us per month,” he said.
Apart from the senior national teams, the Black Stars and Black Queens, the GFA has appointed technical handlers for the Black Stars ‘B’, Black Meteors, Black Satellites, Black Starlets, Black Princesses and Black Maidens who occasionally receive stipends from the FA’s coffers.
The coaches said they had suffered such a plight for a number of years even before the Kurt Okraku-led administration took office in October 2019.
“We can’t be working without being paid. The GFA and the Sports Ministry should do something about it,” lamented one of the coaches who said the GFA had promised to seek sponsorship to be able to put them on a payroll but until then they had to work on an empty stomach.
“They [GFA] said they were working on it. They want to get corporate Ghana to come in and support.
“From the previous administration to this new one, we’ve all been fighting to be paid but the FA said they were working on it. It is unfair for the ministry to allocate all funds to only the Black Stars because the development of football starts from the juvenile level.
“We are working for nothing and that’s why it hurts when you return from tournaments and you are met with insults. If we don’t also don’t do it, football will die so we have to be in and fix it,” he noted.
A GFA official admitted to the Graphic Sports that the FA had an ad hoc relationship with the coaches and was unable to pay monthly salaries because it did not have the needed finances to put the coaches on contracts, as was the peculiar case of coaches of the senior national teams.
Izuchukwu Okosi is a Nigerian sports and entertainment journalist with two decades of experience in the media industry having begun his media journey in 2002 as an intern at Mundial Sports International (MSI) and Africa Independent Television (AIT), owners of Daar Communications Plc.
In October 2004, Okosi joined Complete Communications Limited, publishers of Complete Sports newspaper and Complete Football magazine as a reporter and later script writer for the Complete Sports studio.
He worked there for 13 years until October 2017.
Okosi also worked various times as Correspondent, Content creator and Editor at Sports Market International Magazine, Opera News, All Nigeria Soccer Media and Iconic Media Watch.
He also undertook freelance writing gigs for some local and international organizations.
Okosi is a member of the Actors Guild of Nigeria (AGN), Association of Movie Producers (AMP), Association of Voiceover Artistes of Nigeria (AVOA), Sports Writers Association of Nigeria (SWAN) and Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ).
He has been part of cast in some Nollywood movies and radio dramas including Blood Money 2, Scores To Settle, Dead End 2, Another Campus Tale and Battle Line.
Aside mainstream media and the entertainment industry, he has interests in scouting/unearthing of talents in the sports and creative sectors, exports business and property development.
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