AFN shops for new kit sponsor for Olympics, Okagbare’s arrival excites fans

• NOC boss Gumel, Ogba, others hit Lagos for National Trials

Newly elected board of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN), led by Delta Sports Commission boss, Tonobok Okowa, has started the search for a new sponsor to kit the nation’s athletes at the Tokyo Olympics Games.

A board member of the AFN told The Guardian shortly after Sports Minister, Sunday Dare, inaugurated the Okowa-led AFN board in Abuja on Tuesday that they had already established contacts with some top kit manufacturing companies.

“The Olympic Games is around the corner, and we need to get a kit sponsor for our athletes and officials as quickly as possible. We have opened talks with some of them, and hopefully, in the next couple of days, we will secure one and make it public,” the board member said.

Asked about the Puma kits, which Ibrahim Shehu Gusau said his faction of AFN received at the weekend, the board member said: “As far as we are concerned, AFN does not have a kit sponsor yet. There is nothing in the AFN secretariat to show that we have a deal with Puma. We just held our inaugural meeting, and our secretary (Adeniyi Beyioku) didn’t mention any kit sponsorship deal with Puma. You can’t sign a kit deal without the knowledge of the AFN secretariat.”

Gusau, who held a separate AFN election in Kebbi State on Monday, said he received consignment from Puma, which includes track suits, vests, shoes, backpacks, wheel bags, face masks and others items, whose open market price runs into millions of naira.

Meanwhile, the arrival of top Nigerian athletes, including U.S.-based Blessing Okagbare, Ese Brume and Favour Ofili for the National Trials sparked excitement among athletics fans in Lagos yesterday.

This year’s Track and field National Trials, which will be used to pick Nigerian athletes for the Tokyo Olympics Games, will begin this morning at the Yaba College of Technology, Lagos. It will end on June 20.

Thousands of fans thronged the Teslim Balogun Stadium in Surulere, yesterday morning to watch Okagbare and the likes of Tobi Amusan, Brume, Raymond Okevwo, Utseorise Itsekiri and men’s shot putter, Chukwuemeka Enekechi, in training.

The president of the National Olympics Committee (NOC), Habu Gumel, and his Vice President, Solomon Ogba, are among top dignitaries expected to cheer the athletes at the Yaba College of Technology during the National Trials today. AFN President, Tonobok Okowa, told The Guardian yesterday that everything have been put in place to make the National Trials a huge success.