By Uzor Odigbo
Sport Minister Senator John Enoh has promised to deal with officials found culpable in the No Medal situation Team Nigeria had at the Paris Olympic Games.
Enoh who was a guest on Channels TV programme Politics Today on Wednesday night assured that heads will roll should any official be found guilty in Favour Ofili’s 100m exclusion case at the Olympics.
Enoh was however silent when asked if he would tender his resignation letter as a result of Nigeria’s poor outing at the Olympics.
The Minister was drilled on many issues relating to Ofili, borrowed bike, dope, late training grants and others which hampered the country’s success to earn a medal despite the humongous amount of money (N12 billion) approved for him.
Sen.Enoh laboured during the interview to heap the blame of Nigeria zero medal situation on Heads of Sports Federations some of whom he said, advised him wrongly.
Favour Ofili was not registered for the 100m event and the Sports Minister is investigating almost two weeks after.
Just over two weeks after Favour Ofili found out she was not registered for the 100m event at the Paris 2024 Olympics, Sports Minister, John Enoh is still promising to get to the root of the highly reprehensible administrative error.
The Sports Minister said he did not take immediate action over the matter while at the Games because he did not want to distract Team Nigeria.
Enoh is however insisting that he is going to investigate the whole saga and other negative things that happened at the Games and take appropriate action.
‘If my findings and interrogation reveal people are liable then I am going to take action,’ said the Minister.
The Sports Minister will also not agree that he wasted public money albeit he admitted he got all he asked for from the Federal Government for the Games.
“You will be correct to say we have wasted public money because we didn’t win medals, but I will not agree entirely that we wasted public funds.
“There are events we were participating in for the first time, we had three people in the women’s long jump final for the first time, and you also saw what happened with the basketball team and their historic run.”
The Sports Minister also lamented his lack of recognition at the Olympics. “It is the Nigeria Olympic Committee that the International Olympic Committee recognizes. I have to get whatever I wanted from the NOC President,” he lamented.
“Some of the Federation chairmen had attended Olympics Games three to four times. When I took Office in August 2023 there was nothing about the Olympics, the Federation chairmen gave me all assurances because they select the Athletes and understand their state of readiness for the Olympics.”
He reiterated there would be drastic measures to rebuild the system, especially, at the Federation level.
Enoh however agreed that he has no powers to checkmate the Federation chairmen he said were elected and had their constitutions aligned with their international Federations.
