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| Solomon Ogba, AFN, President |
By Julius Ogunro
I have been on some sort of sabbatical from sports. The last time I
commented seriously on the happenings in the Nigerian sports sector was in 2014
when my former boss Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi exited the cabinet of the Goodluck
Jonathan administration as minister of sports. But last week, a news item
caught my attention. It was a report in the Vanguard newspaper with the
screaming headline, ‘’Your policies, politics killed athletics, Urhobo tells
Abdullahi.’’ But on reading the body of the story, I realized that there was no
correlation between the story and the headline. Urhobo was flailing without
making any valid point. It then occurred
to me that the story may be a very lame attempt by the President of Athletics
Federation of Nigeria (AFN), Mr. Solomon Ogba to attack the former minister
using a proxy.
It is understandable why Mr. Ogba would be unhappy with the former
minister. A few days earlier, Abdullahi had called on him to throw in the towel
for his disastrous leadership of the AFN which led to the woeful performance of
the athletics team in the last Olympics in Rio, Brazil, which is worse than the
failure of London 2012.
Any doubt I had about this was erased the next day when Mr. Ogba
himself was reported in Vanguard calling for Abdullahi to be probe for the high
performance system, which the former Minister began, but was mismanaged after
he left office. Ha, at last the man had managed to muster enough courage and
finally shown the face behind the mask!
But, seriously, let us look
at the issues that have been raised. In the said story, Ogaba made several allegations
against the former minister. One, he alleged that there was some form of
mismanagement of funds released for the high performance system (HPS); two, he
claimed the former minister recruited incompetent people to run the HPS;
finally alleging that Abdullahi starved the various federations of funds when
he was in charge.
Of course, there is no iota of truth in any of these allegations
as they are products of the fertile imaginations of a frustrated Ogba. It was
obvious that Ogba never wanted the high performance system to succeed probably
because he was getting grants from the IAAF to build a high performance system
in Port Harcourt. Perhaps, reason why he conspired to work against the HPS
initiated by ministry of sports. I recall that Abdullahi’s first choice for the
position of technical director was Mike Afilaka, a Nigerian coach who was with
the UK athletics team. It was Ogba who insisted that he preferred Americans for
the job and was part of the team from Nigeria that interviewed various applicants
for the position. Now he has made a volta-face.
His other allegations are bunkum and really do not deserve any
attention. The truth is, Abdullahi spoke up because of his interest and love
for Nigerian sports. I mean, Ogba has led Nigeria to two disastrous outings in
Rio and London, each time the performance was worse than the previous one. To
make matters worse, the man does not have any clue or idea on what to do take
athletics to the next level. His stock-in-trade appears to be insulting people and
making wild allegations to distract attention from his incompetence and bad
leadership.
He should know that such underhand tactics won’t work anymore.
Nigerians are wiser now. In fact, anyone with as much as passing interest in
Nigerian athletics knows that Ogba is the problem of the sport and we will not
make progress as long as he sits at the of the AFN table.
On a personal note, I am however not disappointed by his recent
actions. It is obvious that Ogba is an ingrate and fair-weather friend who spends
90 percent of his time as AFN President groveling at the feet of whoever the
current Sports Minister is. When the APC won the general elections and there
were speculations that Abdullahi would return as Minister, Ogba went into
over-drive, calling the former minister and his associates, begging to be let
in again into Abdullahi’s good books. But by then he was already known for who
is – a two-face Janus!
He really does not have any business running Nigerian athletics.
His full-bodied frame and comportment are better suited for playing the role of
a clown at children’s party. He should not only resign but apologize to
Nigerians for his incompetence which has caused us two disastrous outings at
the Olympics in London 2012 and in Rio, Brazil.
Leave your comment.
Sent by Julius Ogunro,
MD of Peach Communications former Special Assistant on Media to Mallam Bolaji
Abdullahi, the former Minister of sports.
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