Panel indicts top AFN officials, recommends sanctions for secretary, technical director

.Wants AFN to pay N8m as compensation

The Ministerial Committee set up by immediate past Sports Minister, John Owan Enoh, to unravel circumstances that led to Team Nigeria’s failure at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, has recommended sanctions on the secretary general of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN), as well as, the federation’s technical director.

Specifically, the committee said: “The secretary general of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN), Rita Mosindi, should be penalised by the appropriate authority for negligence in her duties. She was unable to provide convincing evidence to our committee to support her claim that she submitted important documents relating to the registration of athlete, Favour Ofili, in the 100 metres to the Ministry of Sports Development, and the Nigeria Olympic Committee.

“Rita’s reliance on social media – WhatsApp messaging as her only means of official communication does not speak well of her competence as an administrative officer.”

On the technical director Samuel Onikeku’s claims that he treated Ofili’s omission as a rumour, the committee said: “Our committee is strongly of the view that the AFN technical director made poor judgment by not reporting such an important “hint” or “rumour” about his own athlete’s omission from an Olympic Games event, even if only to cross-check its veracity or otherwise.”

The panel also recommended an N8 million compensation for sprinter, Favour Ofili, who was inexplicably omitted by Nigerian officials from the list athletes registered for the women’s 100 metres race at the Paris Olympics.

Nigeria returned from the Paris 2024 Olympic Games without winning a single medal. Worst still, the country was exposed to some embarrassing situations at the Games, including the omission of the names of qualified athletes, such as Ofili, for their events.

The panel, which was set up following the furore that trailed the country’s show of shame in Paris, submitted its findings to the minister shortly before he was reassigned to another ministry by the Presidency.

In the document made available to The Guardian at the weekend, the committee said that it discovered that there is a gap in communication among key personnel in the ministry, AFN and the NOC, and therefore recommended that the ministry in liaison with the NOC “design a Code of Governance Document that will state in specific terms, how officials of both organisations and the sports federations should relate in order to have a synergy in their management of athletes’ registration for major events like the Olympic Games, the Commonwealth Games, and the African Games and their other overlapping functions.

“The absence of such a document resulted in supervising personnel of both organisations resorting to top-of-head instructions based on “past practices” or “current realities.

“Our committee was shocked to discover that Samuel Onikeku, who entered Nigeria’s athletes names on the World Athletics portal, and Samuel Fadele, who confirmed the entries on the IOC portal, did not know each other; had never spoken to each other, and had never met until our committee brought them to face with each other.”

The committee recommends that the Code should be developed jointly by the sports federations, the ministry, and the NOC to close the gap in communication among the bodies.