By Uzor Odiggbo
Divine Oduduru has a window of 30-days to appeal his six year ban at the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS).
The Nigerian 200m record holder was on Thursday slammed a six year ban by a three-member disciplinary tribunal for committing two Anti-Doping Rule Violations (ADRVs) of Possession of Prohibited Substances and the Attempted Use of a Prohibited Substance or Method and ordered to pay World Athletics US$3000 towards its expenses regarding the case.
‘To procure those substances, he engaged into a scheme with his teammate who in her turn was procuring those substances on his behalf from a person who was illegally bringing them to US in order to distribute among athletes with the aim to improve their sport performance, thus influencing unfairly the outcome of athletic competitions, including the major ones’, wrote the Athletics Integrity Unit on its website.
In his defence during his hearing, Oduduru insisted he was not a drug cheat and the evidences used to ban him were largely circumstantial.
He also insisted he should not be made to pay for the messages exchanged between Blessing Okagbare and Eric Lira as well as the evidence of the individual who reported he found drugs, syringes and other prohibited susbstances in his apartment in Florida, USA.
The tribunal rejected his pleas but the Nigerian has a chance to prove the AIU erred by banning him when he never tested positive to performance enhancing susbstances or used performance enhancing methods by taking the case to CAS.
It is not known yet if the 2019 NCAA double sprint champion will take advantage of the opportunity to prove his innocence or admit guilt like Okagbare and serve his sentence
