Friday, 29th March 2024
To guardian.ng
Search

Angry Nigerians want Buhari to recall sports minister from Rio

By Gowon Akpodonor
05 August 2016   |   4:32 am
Six-Time Olympian, Segun Toriola, may have seen this ugly situation coming when he declared that preparation for the 2016 Rio Olympics was the worst for Team Nigeria ...
Members of Nigeria's Olympic team arrive to attend a welcoming ceremony at the Athletes' Village ahead of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro on August 3, 2016. Andrej ISAKOVIC / AFP

Members of Nigeria’s Olympic team arrive to attend a welcoming ceremony at the Athletes’ Village ahead of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro on August 3, 2016. Andrej ISAKOVIC / AFP

Dream Team arrives Manaus few hours before match against Japan

Six-Time Olympian, Segun Toriola, may have seen this ugly situation coming when he declared that preparation for the 2016 Rio Olympics was the worst for Team Nigeria in the Olympic history. The reality has dawned on many sports loving Nigerians.

The Nigerian Olympic football team, Dream Team VI, were initially scheduled to leave their training base in Atlanta, USA for Rio, Brazil last Friday, but the departure was moved to Monday.

The trip was later shifted to Tuesday, and then Wednesday. The players and their officials only jetted out to Brazil in the early hours of yesterday and landed in the city of Manaus just a few hours before their opening game against the Blue Samurai of Japan. The game was played at 2.00 a.m. this morning.

As expected, the shabby travel arrangement for the Dream Team has elicited mixed reactions from Nigerians back home, with majority of the people calling for the head of Sports Minister, Solomon Dalung, whom they accused of flouting the order of President Muhammadu Buhari by refusing to hand over preparation of Team Nigeria to the Nigeria Olympics Committee (NOC).

According to reports monitored by The Guardian yesterday, the morale of players and officials of the Dream Team was at the lowest ebb before their departure from the hotel in Atlanta to Brazil. While some of the players were said to have threatened to return to their various clubs just before they were told to move to the airport, others openly expressed regret for being part of the trip.

“This is nonsense. What are we supposed to do now? Just sit in America when the Games are happening in Brazil? We don’t even know when we are leaving and I tell you if we don’t leave today, I will just pack my bags and return to my club,” one of the players told Supersport.com

Some Nigerians, who spoke on different Radio sports programmes in Lagos yesterday, expressed their disappointment at the way and manner the sports minister handled the travel arrangement of the Dream Team and preparation of Team Nigeria in general for the Rio Olympics.

“If President Buhari really meant well for Nigerian sports, he should recall the sports minister from Rio with immediate effect,” one caller, who identified himself as Oludamola from Festac, Lagos said.

Another caller, who gave his name as Sampson from Victoria Garden City (VGC, Lagos), said: “I am sure the sports minister won’t allow his children to go through such rigorous travel arrangement. He has just shown to the entire World that Nigerian government does not care much about the plight of its sports men and women. The sports minister has also shown his weak point. To me, there is no need keeping him in that position. The presidency should sack him immediately.”

Even before the shabby flight arrangement, the team’s preparation camp in Atlanta had been rife with problems, caused by inadequate funding and bad planning. It was learnt that their final tune up game against Honduras was scrapped when the team could not travel to the game site. Even the hotel bills and feeding were said to have been picked by the Nigerian Community in Georgia.

According to reports, it took the intervention of Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, who hired a Delta Jet for the Dream Team to be airlifted from Atlanta to Manaus, Brazil yesterday.

The flight time from Georgia with one stop for refueling in Panama City, Costa Rica, was a little over eight hours. The players were said to have earlier refused to fly a ‘small’ jetliner provided for them from Atlanta before Osibajo’s intervention came yesterday morning.

11 Comments

  • Author’s gravatar

    Nigerians are very resilient! The victory earned over Japan by the Dream Team is a testimony to this fact. Let the guys ignore their struggles and focus on the games ahead. God willing, they will win the Golden Cup again after 20 years.

  • Author’s gravatar

    Shame of a nation. Is this the colour of Buhari’s change, that proper arrangements are not made for Nigeria’s sports ambassadors who devote their time and talents to the service of their country?

  • Author’s gravatar

    Let’s hear from the Minister before making judgment, we all know how crafty our people are when it comes to chopping money, one or two officials may just be taking us for a ride.

  • Author’s gravatar

    the prophesy of the minister of sports was for the team to fail. he has already been talking aobut sanctioning siasia in the press. if not for the so called intervention, the team would have arrived in brazil an hour to the game against japan. thank God Nigeria won.
    dalung expected the team to fail woefully. dalung should immeidtely apologise to siasia and then resign.
    otherwise pmb should recall him, I hope dalung is not reading the script prepared by pmb. nothing will happen to dalung then.

  • Author’s gravatar

    imagine, those ladies looked like drag queens. are we sure they are really women?????

  • Author’s gravatar

    The issue of sacrificing preparations at the altar of “Gods wiiling” has made us as a nation to run out of ideas; it has brougt about inefficiency and gives room for all manner of excuses within governance.
    China, USA and other well populated nations but to mention a few; are not better endowed with material and human resources than Nigeria. until the government put systems in place that will work effectively we as a nation will continue to walk in this vc of inefficiency.

  • Author’s gravatar

    Their victory was a sincere confirmation that they prepared well and that the independence NFF wanted and got should be allowed to remain so.

    The Honourable Minister must not be made the scapegoat of what took place in the USA because it was the duties of an independent NFF to bear the brunts of its ill-suited boasting .

    I wish the Under 23 team more advancements.

    On the calls by Nigerians to recall the Sports Minister , it was all a ruse. Some of those that called were calling from Amos’s house in Lekki because the Sport Thief wants to come back.

    The Honourable Minister is honourable enough to know that stealing business of years past in Sports Commission should not be tolerated.
    NFF cannot be having the ‘Independence’ and the same time blame others for their foolishness always.
    They NFF should have by themselves and by their autonomy handed over the team to Nigeria Olympic Committee.

  • Author’s gravatar

    Everybody is crying minister minister what about the incompetent Amaju Pickin and his gang of nay do well at the NFF? shouldn’t the NFF have planned ahead for the team. As usual looking for where to loot and preparing alibi for failure is their business at NFF.

  • Author’s gravatar

    People should stop giving undue credit to VP Osibanjo. Osibanjo is in charge of the ministers and there is no how the sports minister got a proper briefing and support from the presidency and he would be dilly dally. The is the true face of Buhari government, never serious with anything and the whole world have seen how epileptic his government is. The only area Buhari government is very good in and act with alacrity is in locking up his perceived enemies even without proper investigation.

  • Author’s gravatar

    We should not crucify the sports minister,what we are witnessing is the general incompetence of this Buhari administration.The fact of the matter is Buhari is a fool,unfit and incapable to govern.He is making mockery of himself in government.Is it not stupid and laughable that the only way he sees fit to clear his wife of Fayose’s accusation of his wife is by sending her to America instead of investigating and bringing those behind the crime to justice.