A former Chelsea footballer, Emmanuel Sarki, has revealed why he dumped Nigeria to play for the Haiti national team.
Sarki who starred for Nigeria at different youth levels, including the Golden Eaglets, Flying Eagles and U-23s, claimed that he was asked to pay the sum of £5,000 to get a Super Eagles call-up.
WuzupNigeria gathered that £5,000 which is currently equivalent to ₦2,824,872.50 today(October 15, 2021) was around ₦1,350,000 (using the average pound to naira exchange rate) in 2014.
The Kaduna-born winger told The Athletic: “There were people demanding I pay £5,000 just to make sure Nigeria called me up.
“What? I have to pay to play football for my country? No way, I’m not doing that. But my grandfather had come from Haiti to Nigeria as a missionary, I had his birth certificate, and there was another Haitian in the team at Wisla, who called the Haitian Football Federation president and told him all about me.
“We went to Miami. They picked me up with a helicopter there, and I played in a friendly and scored two goals. God works in a miraculous way… the whole country was going crazy, saying I was the Messiah they’d be waiting for to help them qualify for the Gold Cup.
“We played the Caribbean Cup and lost to Jamaica in the final — that was so painful, but Jamaica, they had a really good team full of guys who were playing in England.
“I stopped going because of the travelling in the end. I have a phobia of flying. The last game I travelled with them was to China (in 2015) and I was travelling for 17 or 18 hours to get to the game.
“It was too stressful for me. I said to them I was really sorry but I’m done. I don’t want to travel that far. I was throwing up on the flights; I felt dizzy.
“To represent them was really amazing but now I’m getting old. I’m 33, taking it easy, just balling. I have a young son, Samuel, and my fiancee is Polish. I am home.”
