  Light sterile neutrinos of mass about an eV with mixing $\tilde U_{ls}$ of a
few percent to active neutrinos may solve some anomalies shown in experimental
data related to neutrino oscillation. How to have light sterile neutrinos is
one of the theoretical problems which have attracted a lot of attentions. In
this article we show that such an eV scale light sterile neutrino candidate can
be obtained in a seesaw model in which the right-handed neutrinos satisfy a
softly-broken Friedberg-Lee (FL) symmetry. In this model a right-handed
neutrino is guaranteed by the FL symmetry to be light comparing with other two
heavy right-handed neutrinos. It can be of eV scale when the FL symmetry is
softly broken and can play the role of eV scale sterile neutrino needed for
explaining the anomalies of experimental data. This model predicts that one of
the active neutrino is massless. We find that this model prefers inverted
hierarchy mass pattern of active neutrinos than normal hierarchy. An
interesting consequence of this model is that realizing relatively large
$|{\tilde U}_{es}|$ and relatively small $|{\tilde U}_{\mu s}|$ in this model
naturally leads to a relatively small $|{\tilde U}_{\tau s}|$. This interesting
prediction can be tested in future atmospheric or solar neutrino experiments.
