It seems the financial constraints which rocked the 2011/2012 Nigeria Premier League (NPL) is set to continue next season as the funds supposedly meant to prosecute next season’s games have allegedly been spent.

Prince Udofia, the Rivers State Coordinator of the Association of Nigeria Professional Players (APFON) made this allegation insisting that the board of the NPL have been disbursing funds meant for next season’s league among themselves.

Speaking on a sports programme on a local TV, Channels Television, Udofia tendered documents which he claimed proved that the NPL board has already spent 20 million naira ($127,000) meant for television rights for the 2012/2013 campaign.

Also, according to the APFON Coordinator, a total of about 2 million naira ($13, 000) was shared among the NPL board members as sitting allowances.

Udofia’s documents also showed that the NPL board allegedly spent 5.5 million naira ($35,000) for the final league games of last season after they had spent 3.2 million naira ($20,000 ) on referees indemnities for the games.

As at the time of this report, neither the chairman of the NPL Mr Victor Baribote nor the board itself have reacted to these allegations.

The NPL was faced with lots of financial constraints in the just concluded season which saw Northern based team Kano Pillars emerge champions. Such was the height of this financial issues that home clubs were forced to pay indemnities of officials for every home league game.

Meanwhile in a related development, the NPL has announced the postponement of the 2012/2013 Pre-season activities earlier scheduled to hold as from October 2, 2012.