Ofiligate: Who is ‘the real culprit’ AFN and NOC officials are protecting with their revealing testimonies?

It is glaring from the testimonies of Athletics Federation of Nigeria, AFN, and Nigeria Olympic Committee, NOC, officials before the Ministerial Investigative Committee on Nigeria’s Negative Exposure at the Paris 2024 Olympics that they are trying to protect an official who must have ordered the removal of Favour Ofili’s name from the 100m event at the Paris Games.

Sportsnow.com.ng has examined all the testimonies and the one in particular by Samuel Onikeku, a Superintendent with the Nigeria Customs, who gave the clearest hint yet that the decision must have been taken by someone else after admitting he got the ‘hint’ and heard a ‘rumour’ that Ofili’s name was not registered for the 100m in the final list sent to the International Olympic Committee, IOC, by the Nigeria Olympic Committee, NOC, despite the athlete telling the responsible officer at the AFN she wanted to compete in the two individual events she qualified for.

Rita Moshindi, the AFN Secretary General’s comment in a conversation with Emmanuel Nweri, a contract staff with the NOC, doubting the ability of Ofili to combine the 100m and 200m events also revealed the inner workings of officials at the AFN.

The Committee, in its report, had alluded to three possibilities but could not pin the actual reason for not registering Ofili for the blue ribband event to any of the three.

The Committee wrote thus: ‘The Investigative Committee submits further that one of the following scenarios might have led to Favour Ofili’s omission from the 100 meters
event.

Scenario One: The Technical Director of the AFN went back to remove Favour Ofili’s name from the World Athletics portal AFTER the Final List that he submitted on 3 July, 2024.

(The Technical Director denied this. The Investigative Committee wrote directly to Carlo De Angeli of World Athletics to confirm if the AFN or anyone else made any changes to the Final List submitted by AFN. We did not get any reply from World Athletics).

Scenario Two: World Athletics neglected to correctly transmit the Final List submitted to it by the AFN to the IOC portal due to human error or a computer glitch.

Scenario Three: The IOC portal did not correctly pre-load on its portal the full Final List submitted to it by World Athletics due to human error or a computer glitch.’

However, the Investigative Committee was unable to establish which of the three scenarios painted above might have occurred.

The Committee should have insisted Onikeku reveal how he got the ‘hint’ between July 11 and 12, 2024 and mention who posted the ‘rumour’ on the coaches platform as he claimed in his testimony.

It is glaring the ‘hint’ which Onikeku got as early as July 11 or 12, 2024 could not have been a random person not connected with the registration procedure either at AFN or NOC level.

Onikeku should have also been asked to explain the reason he gave for not reporting the hint if he knew doing so would mean he was courting trouble.

The AFN Technical Director was quoted as saying thus: ‘I don’t want to be involved in any trouble.’ This is pregnant with a lot of meanings and proved the ‘trouble’ could have been responsible for Onikeku’s reluctance to name name(s).

The Committee should have also asked the administrator of the WhatsApp platform where Mrs Moshindi said she and others linked to the Paris 2024 Olympics post information regarding the Games to verify the AFN Secretary General’s claim that she posted the final list of track and field athletes for the Games following her claim that her phone got damaged at the Games.

The fact that the NOC officials who testified before the Committee were not able to substantiate their claims that they did not receive the final list from Mrs Moshindi by providing what Mrs Moshindi posted on the platform shows they may also be protecting the actual person who started the who disgraceful drama.

The officials should have been categorical about whether the final list was posted or not and substantiate this with what Mrs Moshindi posted on the platform. It is not enough to say she did not send the list to them without showing evidence of what she posted.