AFN 2025 Election: Ogba, Gusau, Nesiama not eligible to contest!
Two former Presidents of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria, AFN, Solomon Ogba and Shehu Ibrahim Gusau as well as a former technical director of the federation, Navy Commodore (retd) Omatseye Nesiama are among the big names that have been barred from ever contesting elections into the board of the AFN following the amendments to the constitution of the federation done by the congress in January 2023.
The congress, convened by Tonobok Okowa, the President of the Federation, agreed to a term limit for members of the executive board of the federation.
In the draft of the amended constitution, article 17, titled TERMS OF OFICCE, was specially drafted to stop the first Vice President of the AFN, Tafida Gadzama, rumoured to be nursing an ambition to become the federation’s president, from returning to the board after he finished serving his third term on the board.
Now, some of the big names nursing the plan to come back to the federation have been caught in the plan by the leadership of the current executive board of the AFN to stop Gadzama.
Article 17.2 of the amended constitution states that ‘the maximum number of terms of office for any member of the Executive Board is three (3) terms, except that for the President, the
maximum term is two (2) terms.’
Article 17.3 further explained that ‘any term served by an Executive Board Member will be counted as a term of office for the purposes of calculating the maximum number of terms of office on the Executive Board.’
Ogba served for two terms as AFN President and was also in the AFN board led by Gusau in 2017 before he resigned his membership in 2019 while Gusau twice served under Ogba as vice president before he was elected president in 2017.
Nesiama was AFN technical director under Ogba for two terms and returned to the AFN for his third term in June 2021.
Although the amended constitution has not been made available to the congress of the federation almost 17 months after it was done by the congress, there were condemnation by stakeholders at the time who expressed surprise that the AFN could impose term limit on its executive board members and argued that only the position of the President is tenured.
Rita Moshindi, the Secretary General of the AFN has not told the federation’s congress why the amended constitution has not been made public and sent to members of the congress.
A few of the members kicked against Mrs Moshindi’s comment that the Federal Ministry of Sports Development will have to approve it when it was clearly stated in the draft document that the (amended) Constitution shall come into force as from the date of its adopting at the 2023 Congress held in Jalingo, Taraba State on 28th of January, 2023.
The members have said any alteration will render the constitution invalid as only the congress has the final say on which article is amended or not.
