By CrossRiverWatch Admin
Players (names withheld to prevent punitive measures being meted on them) of the Pelican Stars football club of Calabar have starved for eight months following non payment of allowances. They disclosed this in different interviews with newsmen.
Pelican Stars is one of the two female football teams owned by the Cross River state Government.
But for the postponement of the Nigerian Professional Women’s League due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the club would have also missed out on the 2019/2020 season due to lack of funding.
Other clubs owned by the state currently suffer the same fate.
The UNICEM Rovers football club was paid until January 2020 while table payment has been scheduled for the Benedict Ayade United football club to clear three months salaries.
Rovers and Pelicans were the only two teams before 2017 when the head of the sports commission, Orok Otu, in a move largely described as political, created the Ben Ayade and Linda Ayade teams named after the Governor and his wife.
It is unclear whether the Linda Ayade team is suffering a similar fate and whether the welfare of the club staff which is the only one in the state playing in a top division would be catered for especially after the ban on gatherings of more than five by the state.
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