Sports Ministry and AFN connive to waste Nigerian tax payers money by taking an injured Oghenebrume to the Olympics!

At a time, Nigerians are protesting over the wasteful spending by public officials and President Bola Tinubu’s bold move to address this, officials of the Federal Ministry of Sports Development and the Athletics Federation of Nigeria, AFN, connived to circumvent Tinubu’s move by taking an injured athlete, Godson Oghenebrume to the ongoing Paris 2024 Olympics.

Oghenebrume was injured in Nigeria’s training camp in Germany and unofficially ruled out for eight weeks which means he would not be available to compete at the Games.

The AFN, accused of nepotism over the selection of the athlete and one other in the first place over a Seye Ogunlewe, a Lagos born athlete, who fulfilled all the selection criteria set by the AFN, did not issue any official statement on the Delta state born athlete’s status for the Games when there was still enough time to correct the injustice done to Ogunlewe.

The first sign that Oghenebrume was not fit was when the AFN withdrew him from the 100m event and left only the duo of Kanyinsola Ajayi and Favour Ashe to compete in the event.
With Ogunlewe not still included, Athletics faithful were shocked Ushoritse Itshekiri was not considered as the third man to run in the event to allow him keep his shape.

To finally confirm the hitherto unconfirmed news of Oghenebrume unavailability for the Games, the athlete was not named in the 4x100m quartet that competed Thursday in the semifinal of the event.

Nigerians are calling on President Tinubu to sanction the Sports Minister, John Enoh who knew about Ogunlewe’s unfair exclusion and yet allow Nigerian tax payers money to be wasted on an injured athlete.

The AFN should also be sanctioned for not just being a federation that is incompetent and makes barefaced lies like that of saying athletes who are ranked above 56 in World Athletics rankings are not qualified to compete at the Games, but also for being nepotic.
Meanwhile, the team failed to advance to the final for the fifth straight Olympics after the quartet of Favour Ashe, Kanyinsola Ajayi, Alaba Akintola and Itshekiri ran 38.20, a personal season’s best to place seventh in their semifinal heat and also seventh in the overall classification classification in terms of the time they ran.