Gadzama urges Dikko to act on Paris 2024 Olympics Investigative Committee report to protect the integrity of NSC
Mallam Shehu Dikko, the Chairman of the National Sports Commission, NSC, has been told to start his move to rid the Sports sector of incompetent and indolent officials with the implementation of the recommendations of the Instigative Committee set up by John Enoh, immediate past Minister of Sports Development, to investigate Nigeria’s negative exposures at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
The Committee’s briefs included probing why Favour Ofili was not registered for the 100m event despite the athlete qualifying to compete in the event.
The Committee, headed by the highly respected and veteran journalist, Dr Mumuni Alao, made the report of his committee public on the order of Dikko who has assumed leadership of Nigerian sport following the removal, as it were, of Enoh.
Dikko has now been urged to go a step further to act on the recommendations of the Committee which, inter-alia, called for the Secretary General of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria, AFN, Ms Rita Moshidi to be sanctioned.
‘The Secretary General of Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN), Rita Mosindi should be penalized by the appropriate authority for NEGLIGENCE in her duties. She was unable to provide convincing evidence to our Committee to support her claim that she submitted important documents relating to the registration of the athlete, Favour Ofili in the 100 meters, to the Ministry of Sports Development and the Nigeria Olympic Committee (NOC).
‘Rita Mosindi’s reliance on social media WhatsApp messaging as the only means of official communication does not speak well of her competence as an administrative officer,’ the Committee wrote in its report.
Olympic gold medalist and Vice President of the AFN, Tafida Gadzama believes Dikko should act on the report to not only show his seriousness about having competent officials in charge of sports administration in Nigeria but to also warn those working in the National Sports Commission they would need to be efficient and effective in what they do.
‘Dikko has been given the perfect opportunity to show that he will not condone indolent and incompetent officials who give sports administrators and sprots administration bad name in Nigeria,’ said Gadzama who recalls the recommendations of an AFN Audit Committee which he headed on Ms Moshidi.
Gadzama recalls the Audit Committee recommended that the Secretary General was asked to refund all monies spent without budgets and approvals and that the Federal Ministry of Sports should urgently redeploy her as she has proved not to have the capacity to head the secretariat of the federation and be its chief administrative and accounting officer.
Gadzama revealed Ms Moshidi neither presented to his committee requests for approvals to the President (and the board) nor the approvals by the President for expenditures made and that she
did not also present either vouchers or cheques raised for the payments.
‘The Secretary General has been acting as if the AFN was a private property where monies can be spent anyhow without budgets and approvals and the AFN President openly queried her during our last board meeting on the expenditure for both the World Relays and the World U20 Championships this year after telling board members he did not know how much was released by the Federal Government and how it was spent,’ added Gadzama.
The Sydney 2000 Olympics and 1999 African Games gold medalist is confident Dikko will not want to allow people to start querying his own integrity if he fails to act on the Dr Mumuni Alao’s Ministerial Investigative Committee report.
