With just seven days to the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympics, a former president of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN), Dan Ngerem, has faulted the Federal Ministry of Sports Development and Nigeria Olympics Committee’s (NOC) choice of a foreign company to kit the country’s contingent to the Games.
 
A mild drama ensued last week when two different kits were handed to the athletes before departing to their training camp in Germany. While Actively Black unveiled a series of kits comprising performing gears and track wear for Team Nigeria, the athletes were also presented with another set of kits made by Peak when the ministry handed over the team to the NOC, last Monday. The kits from Peak come with customised travelling bags for the athletes.
  
The entire episode, however, reawakened the fiasco that rocked Team Nigeria during the Tokyo 2020 Games. Speaking with The Guardian, yesterday, Ngerem, who was AFN President between 2001 and 2005, said: “I am at odds with the fact that the national team will be kitted at the Paris Olympics by a foreign company based in Los Angeles, with only three members of staff, while our designers and clothiers are making waves and holding events around the world, just like our music stars.
 
“I am wondering if we don’t have a sense of self pride anymore as a people, and as a nation. We have better, and big-name brands in the shoe-making industry. So, what is a country as big as Nigeria doing with a company of three staff in America? Have we fallen that low and are now this shameless? All, perhaps, predicated on private greed and gain?” Ngerem queried.
 
The NOC, last week explained that the Actively Black kits were the approved apparel by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for Team Nigeria’s use at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, which will be held between July 26 and August 11. But the Sports Ministry later unveiled the kits by Peak in Abuja.
 
The Secretary-General of the NOC, Tunde Popoola, stated that the Peak kits provided by the ministry would only be additional wear for the athletes, while Actively Black is the kit that the IOC officially approved.