Tunisian Club Punished by FIFA Over Debt Owed to Nigerian Footballer

Tunisian Premier League side, Club Athletique (CA) Bizertin has been punished by FIFA for failing to pay Nigerian footballer Ibrahim Abubakar Aliyu his wages. The 23-year-old Nigerian center-forward, now plying his trade with Norway’s IK Start, sued the North African side after Bizertin shunned his repeated pleas to pay his wages.

Aliyu’s row with the Stade 15 Octobre outfit began in his second season with the team after signing from Nasarawa United in the summer of 2015. The attacker later walked out on the Tunisians over the troubled club’s failure to pay players their salaries on time. His agent Emefie Aneke Atta drew FIFA’s attention to the matter by instituting legal action against CA.

The Lausanne-based football entity heard the case and accepted the Nigerian’s version of events, slapping a punishment on Bizertin in the form of a six-point deduction. The verdict, which includes the four-time Tunisian league winners paying the player 520,000 dinars, comes on the back of The Northern Shirks’ inability to meet FIFA’s initial January deadline to pay up.

Image: INFOFOOTS