Nigeria’s Men’s 4x400m relay team has been disqualified from the ongoing Paris Olympics games.
The team which had kept Nigeria’s hope of winning a medal at the tournament alive, got kicked out after the referee reported a lane violation in the semifinal [TR17.2.3].
With a time record of 2:59.81, team Nigeria’s quartet of Emmanuel Ojeli, Ezekiel Nathaniel, Dubem Amene, and Chidi Okezie finished 2nd in the semifinal heat and were hopeful of participating in Saturday’s final.
The development comes after Tobi Amusan, crashed out of the tournament after placing third in the overall Semi-finals of women 100m hurdle.
The current world champion and world record holder came behind United States’ Alayasha Johnson, who had a record of 12:39 seconds and Bahmas’ Devynne Charlton with a record of 12:50 seconds.
Nigeria is yet to win a medal at the Olympics which will end on Sunday.
On Tuesday, former Super Eagles Coach, Adegboye Onigbinde, took a swipe at Nigeria’s performance in the game attributing it to lack of good sports administration in the country.
The veteran technical sports director said: “You see, why Nigerian athletes are not performing well in the ongoing Olympics and other international sports competitions is not technical, but administrative. Is it technical that an athlete who qualified properly in her event will be ridiculed by not registering her for participation?
“Situations like this will continue if our administrators don’t separate politics from sports.”
According to him, most of the administrators have forgotten the core objective of developmental programmes in sports which had earned the country some measure of success in the past.
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