The 2016 Rio Olympics, which ended recently, represents one of Nigeria’s lowest moments in the history of the Games.
Save for the solitary bronze won by Nigeria’s U23 men’s football team, the Dream Team, Nigeria would have returned from Brazil, venue of the Games, empty handed.
The team coached by Samson Siasia had to endure the indignity of being stranded in Atlanta, USA, where it had gone to firm up preparations for the Games. It took the intervention of team captain,
Mikel Obi, who funded some of the activities of the squad, to keep players and officials focused.
Nigeria’s shame was compounded when it could not summon the funds needed to transport the team to Manaus, Brazil, venue of the team’s opening games. It took American company,
Delta Airlines to transport the team free of charge to Brazil.
The only response the beleaguered team got from the Nigerian government, was censure from
Solomon Dealing, Nigeria’s Minister of Sports, who when he visited the team in Atlanta, not only claimed ignorance of how the team got there but also vowed to deal with players and officials who had disclosed their plight to Nigerians and the world.
Nigerian Times can authoritatively reveal that whilst he was claiming ignorance of the plight of the U23 team and whilst the rest of the Nigerian contingent were groaning from lack of funds and shoddy preparations, Dalung was perfecting plans to storm Rio on a jamboree.
This paper is in possession of a visa application letter sent to the Brazilian embassy on behalf of the Minister by the Nigerian Olympic Committee (NOC). The letter signed by Tunde Popoola, NOC Secretary General and dated July 18, 2016, requested the embassy to issue visas to 36 individuals whom he described as “guests of the Honourable Minister of Sports”.
Attempts to reach the minister or his his aide on Media, Nneka Ikem Anibeze failed as calls to their phones failed to go through at the time of filing this report.
A source at the sports ministry who wanted his name kept out of this report, however, told this paper that Dalung’s bloated guest list, deplorable as it may be, is not new. He said successive sports ministers have seen events like the Olympics and Commonwealth games as avenues to carry their friends and family members on junkets abroad.
“ The list of the sports minister is nothing to be surprised about. It is a practice that is decades old and from the look of things, it will not end any time some,” he said.
Dalung’s conduct is particularly worrisome and is in sharp violation of the directive of President Muhammadu Buhari that frivolous spending by officials of his government was outlawed. It also portrays the sports minster as insensitive.
Whilst in Atlanta, he had ordered four members of the U23 team include the two alternate players and the team’s media officer to return to Nigeria before the end of the Olympic Games on the ground that the government could no longer afford to cater for them.
Source: Nigeriantimes.ng
