Ex-AFN boss fingered in Ofili’s saga?

Psychologist Leads Delegation To Olympics Village

To boost the confidence of United States-based sprinter, Favour Ofili ahead of her 200m event, Team Nigeria’s psychologist, Dr. Emmanuel Ikpeme, and one other top official has visited her at the Olympic Games village.

The visit, which is aimed at pumping up the athlete’s spirit at the Paris Olympics after her name was erroneously omitted by a yet-to-be named official from the 100m event, came just as the reigning Commonwealth Games Discuss champion, Chioma Onyekwere, expressed her sympathy with the sprinter.

The Guardian learnt that Ikpeme, and one other official met with Ofili at the Olympics Village to urge her to forge ahead and look towards a brighter day in the Games.

Onyekwere, who begins her campaign in the Discuss throw today, also took to her social media page to identify with Ofili.

‘My heartbreaks for my teammate. After not getting a chance to compete in Tokyo and now missing the women’s 100m due to no fault of her own. This is so disheartening as an athlete,” wrote Onyekwere.

Meanwhile, Ofili says she is yet to see or hear anyone is being punished for what the NOC and AFN did to her. She was not in the 100m first round heats concluded on Friday morning.

Many Nigerians felt Ofili would also have easily made it to the semifinals but for the negligence on the part of those who refused to send her name to the organisers.

A former President of the AFN is being fingered in the saga, according to sportsnow.com.

Barely one hour after the conclusion of the first round heats of the 100m, Ofili took to her social media page to further vent her anger with some questions.

“Sadly, nothing has been done…. I’m yet to see or hear anyone is being punished for what the NOC (Nigeria Olympic Committee) and AFN did to me. Athletes shouldn’t be getting punished for things out of their control,” she wrote and reminded that she was not the first victim of this ineptitude but promised to fight on.

“NOC and AFN…, this is not the first-time you guys are doing this so don’t think this is over because is not,” she further wrote.

“Who assigned federations and/or Olympic committees to enter athletes into Olympic Games? Is it World Athletics? If so, should they not hold them accountable when they fail to do their job by not entering athletes in events they qualify and want to compete?”