Presidential Candidate of Labour Party (LP) in last year’s elections, Peter Obi, has demanded a thorough probe of the dismal outing of Nigeria’s contingent to this year’s Olympics games in Paris, France.
Obi made the call on Sunday in series of posts on his X handle.
Daily Trust reports that Nigeria finished the Paris 2024 games without winning any medal, as was the case in London Olympics of 2012.
At the 2016 Rio Olympics, Nigeria won a bronze medal in men’s football before claiming a silver and bronze medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, held in 2021.
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This year, the country featured 88 athletes in 12 sports and came off empty-handed, despite high expectations, as notable medal prospects Tobi Amusan, Blessing Oborududu, Favour Ofili, Ese Brume, and Quadri Aruna fell short in their respective games.
In his tweets, Obi said, “I call on the government to investigate these gross misconducts and make sure that those responsible do not have the opportunity to do so again. The rascality and recklessness that has continued to characterise leadership in our nation in nearly every department. The general impression that has come to stick is the one that portrays our country as a joke, even on the international stage.
“How can one explain that a country like Jamaica spent less than 5% of what we spent on our contingents for the Paris Olympics 2024 and won as many as 6 medals. Yet with our huge financial investments and large contingent, we could not win even a single medal?
“At least nine African countries won gold but the giant with over 200m people came home without even a bronze. We invested about N12bn in this year’ s Olympics, which is almost twice the amount budgeted for the entire Ministry of Science and Technology for this year.”
Obi said this is over N136m (about $85,000) spent on each of the 88 Nigerian contingents to the Olympics, and no single medal was won while Jamaica, a nation which spent far less than we did, a total of about $2300 on each contingent, won 6 medals; 1 Gold, 3 Silver and 2 Bronze at the Olympics.
“We must now interrogate the relationship between this huge investment and our dismal outcome. Sad stories like this are our lot only because we have refused to embrace competence and capacity over routine and favouritism in Nigeria.
“Let us consider the case of Favour Ofili, a Nigerian professional sprinter who trained for years for the 2024 Olympics, only for her name to be recklessly and wrongly removed from the list of athletes for the 100m race at the Olympics by Nigerian sporting authorities.
“What explanation can anyone give about Annette Echikunwoke, a former Nigerian hammer thrower, who was frustrated by the same rascality of some Nigerian leaders, making her switch her allegiance to the United States, where she eventually won a medal in the just completed Olympics?
“These same professional athletes were denied the opportunity to represent our nation in Tokyo 2020, for similar reasons of administrative recklessness. I have it on good authority that some injured athletes, not physically fit to represent the country and not competing in the ongoing Olympics, were there in Paris receiving estacodes from our national resources.
“Some of the sports officials and others who have no reason to be at the Olympics were there too, living large and feeding fat on the estacodes while our nation was crashing out on every sporting event. One of our athletes, Ese Ukpeseraye, had to borrow a bicycle to compete at her sporting event. How can one sensibly explain such recklessness and infamy?,” Obi said.
John Enoh, Minister of Sports, has since apologised over the shambolic Olympics performance, narrating the role he played to put things in shape.
“The Olympic Games, Paris 2024, has ended, and I accept that our performance should have been a lot better. It obviously fell short of our objectives, expectations, and hopes of Nigerians. I must apologize to our compatriots and reflect on what went wrong while looking forward to the Paralympic Games, Paris 2024(August 28- September 8th),” he said.
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