Gara Gombe: ‘What will the Sports Minister, Enoh tell President Tinubu after Nigeria’s Paris 2024 Olympics misadventure?’
Chairman of Gombe State Athletics Association, Shuaib Gara Gombe has blamed Sports Development Minister, John Owan Enoh for Nigeria’s misadventure to the Paris 2024 Olympics where the country has returned without winning a medal, 12 years after the country last did so.
Gombe told Nigeria’s Guardian newspaper Enoh abdicated his responsibility and was instead chasing shadows.
‘What will the Sports Minister John Owan Enoh tell President Bola Tinubu now that Nigeria failed to win medal at the Paris Olympics?, Gombe was quoted as asking by the Guardian.
Gombe told the Guardian Nigeria’s medal less feat in Paris is only rivalled by what happened 12 years ago in London when the country also returned without a medal.
‘Yes, Nigeria’s participation in this Paris 2024 Olympics is the worst Olympic competing with London 2012 in the medal finish. And I blame the Sports Minister for this worst outing because he never planned well for the Olympics.
‘When he was supposed to plan for the Paris Olympics, the Sports Minister was busy following NFA (Nigeria Football Federation) up and down looking for football coach and getting himself involved in technical matters and at the same time hosting all sorts of jokers and mediocre in the name of partnership and collaboration. He was busy travelling from one country to another doing nothing,’ Gombe was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
Gombe also blamed Enoh for the track and field team’s medal less run in Paris. Athletics has provided 14 of the 27 medals Nigeria has won at the Games, including two of the three gold medals. He told the Guardian Enoh did not do enough to unite the board.
Sportsnow.com.ng recalls the Sports Minister promised to institute an independent probe of the AFN audit committee report that indicted both the President of the federation and the Secretary General but, almost five months after the promise, nothing has been done.
Enoh was severally told about the incompetence of the Secretary General and the nepotism in the federation that led to the non-listing of Seye Ogunlewe in Nigeria’s team to the Paris Olympics, albeit the 100m runner fulfilled all the criteria for selection set by the federation, including that of World Athletics.
The Sports Minister believed all the lies told to him by the AFN and allowed the injustice to Ogunlewe, son of Lagos born politician and former Minister of Works and Housing.
