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Lagos City marathon officials cry to Ambode over unpaid allowance

By Gowon Akpodonor
07 March 2016   |   11:46 pm
One month after the maiden Access Bank Lagos City Marathon race, some of the managers who worked to make the event a successful one have appealed to Governor Akinwunmi Ambode...
Akinwumi Ambode, Lagos State Governor.

Akinwumi Ambode, Lagos State Governor.

• We are not indebted to anybody, says LOC
One month after the maiden Access Bank Lagos City Marathon race, some of the managers who worked to make the event a successful one have appealed to Governor Akinwunmi Ambode to prevail on the Lagos State Sports Commission and the General Manager of the marathon, Yusuf Ali, to pay their allowances.

The managers, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being blacklisted, claimed that Ali had not been picking his calls since the completion of the marathon race.

They also alleged that the Chairman of the Local Organising Committee for the marathon, Deji Tinubu, who is also the chairman of Lagos Sports Commission, had been unreachable.

But the spokesman for the Lagos City Marathon, Kayode Thomas, told The Guardian yesterday that the LOC was not indebted to anybody.

“We are not indebted to anybody. All our contractors and staff have been paid. Anybody claiming that he or she is being owned should please come out in the open with facts. We are currently busy working on the next edition which promise to be bigger and better,” he said.

But the managers, who claimed to have worked as registration officials and traffic controllers during the marathon race, said: “We have made several calls to Yusuf Ali who employed us to know when we shall be paid but he has not been picking his calls.”

Speaking further, one of the managers said: “We were told to call Deji Tinubu but he too has not been reachable especially in the last one week. We really do not have any business with him since it was Skippo (Yusuf Ali) that engaged us.”

The managers further revealed that the title sponsor of the marathon, Access Bank, has fulfilled all contractual obligations for the event and wondered what could be delaying their payment.
“We really don’t know what could have caused this delay because we got confirmation from Access Bank that all the money requested for by the organisers of the marathon have been paid. We want Governor Ambode to use his good office to bail us out.”

Some of the volunteers who worked for the LOC are also said to be grumbling over alleged non-payment of their stipend.
A source hinted yesterday that the Lagos State Sports Commission has queried the large number of top managers engaged by the general manager of the event (Yusuf Ali) and this could be the main reason for the delay in the payment.

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