Sports Minister: Why I have not resigned after shambolic Paris 2024 Olympics outing

Sports Development Minister, John Owan Enoh says Nigeria is different from other climes and gives reasons why he will not resign following Nigeria’s shambolic outing at the Paris 2024 Olympics.

Speaking Wednesday evening on Politics Today on Channels TV, the anchor, Seun Okinbaloye asked why no official(s) has been fired or named and shamed for the woeful outing and that in other climes, the head of the delegation, the Sports Minister in this case, would have resigned.

Enoh told Okinbaloye Nigeria is not like other climes and tried to offer explanations why he has not resigned.

The Sports Minister did not however offer any logical explanation but instead tried to defend the huge N12b budgeted for both the Olympics and the Paralympics.

Enoh said the N12b people are talking about is not much different from the less than N2 billion approved for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, and lamented how much the Nigerian naira has depreciated to the dollar.

‘Imagine what those 2 billion naira was four (actually three) years ago and what it is now.

‘The Olympics and Paralympics are international matters and are denominated mostly in dollars. I am not saying 12 billion is not a huge sum, but I am also calling your attention to the difference in value then and now,’ said Enoh.

Sportsnow can reveal that N2b three years ago was 1.2m dollars while the 12b naira Enoh got is 7.3m dollars.

Enoh also revealed it was the duty of the sports federations to prepare their athletes and not that of the Federal Ministry of Sports Development.

‘My responsibility is to prosecute the Games. I had sessions with sports federations in Nigeria. As Minister of Sports Development, you do not directly train the athletes, monitor them… these are the responsibilities of different sporting federations,’ said Enoh.

He added that the federations made projections which informed his rhetoric of performing better than the country did in 1996.

He also confused Nigeria’s performance at the African Games in Accra, Ghana with that of the Olympics, saying Nigeria was second in Accra and expected at least a repeat performance from some of the athletes at the Olympics.

‘The top stars we depended on were those who went to the African Games and came second. I didn’t expect that we will go and overwhelm the world, but I didn’t expect we will go and return without a medal,’ he said.

Despite bizarrely admitting not being in charge of the athletes’ preparations, Enoh said he did not envisage Team Nigeria’s woeful performance.

‘I worked hard; I did everything I should do but I didn’t see this (shambolic performance) coming at all. I didn’t envisage it will this way,’ he said.