By Emma Una
FOR five days running, the the thirty players of Rovers Football Club of Calabar   (UNICEM Rovers) who are protesting the non payment of their four months salaries and match bonuses have occupied the gate of the Cross River State governor’s office along Leopard Town Road to demand for the release of their salaries.

Brave Imoke, the captain of the team told Sports Vanguard that he and his colleagues have been undergoing severe hunger and lack as a result of the failure of the management of the team to pay their salaries and match bonuses in the past four months.

Senator Liyel Imoke of Cross River State at Government House.

“In the past four months we have not received salaries from our management while the money made available to us by our sponsors, UNICEM, the management has used it to pay themselves and the remaining money was used in giving some of the management staff salary advance. Not a kobo of that money got to us, the players in the past four months”.

The spokesman of the players who is from Abi, the lamented that the bill given by the chairman of the team Mr Maurice Inok to the government was “outrageous because our accumulated salaries and match bonuses for the four months is 6.8 million Naira, while he gave the government a bill of 32 million Naira which is making it difficult for government to pay.”

Imoke said Inok claims that he is giving the bill of 32 million in order to offset debts and also prosecute the next season and queries how feasible that can be going by the fact that the club still has outstanding salary of players and match bonuses to offset.

He said Senator Imoke sent his deputy, Mr Efiok Cobham to address them but instead of giving them hope he was instead threatening them.”The Deputy Governor said he is the number two man in the state and was threatening us that he will send policemen to tear gas us if we refused to leave and when we told him that we had not eaten for days, he said we won’t die of hunger. He asked us to go back to the hostel,” Imoke said.

Maurice Inok, Chairman of the club confirmed to Sports Vanguard that what they are asking from government was N32m. He said what the players were demanding was a “function of cash … and you cannot give what you do not have; everybody is aware of the financial situation in the state so government is doing its best to address the players demands”

He said the 32 million Naira bill he forwarded to the state governor is to enable the management of the team meet other pressing needs like buying a bus for the team, offset debts carried over from the last management and also prosecute the 2016 league season. ‘These players are living in a hostel but they fail to understand that the UNICEM they are talking about gave us four million naira for nine months while the league lasted for twelve months and we had to borrow from the money market to make up the shortfall from what we were receiving from UNICEM and if you borrow 1 million naira at the end of the month you have to pay interest and much of that money is still outstanding so we had to appeal to the state governor who is a sports lover to bail us out”.

He said most of the players do not seem to understand what they are asking for that is why they are insisting that their salaries and match bonuses should be paid first while other needs of the club suffer.