AFN, Ogba, Ministry Staff Fingered As Ofili Misses N80m On Contract

Top Nigeria athletics coach and statistician, Olalekan Soetan has suspected the Nigeria Olympic Committee (NOC) First Vice President, Solomon Ogba, as the man behind the removal or omission of Favour Ofili’s name from competing in the 100m race at the 2024 Olympic Games.

Favour Ofili who was disappointed for being left out to compete in 100m in a race she would have made a final and thereby make almost Fifty thousand dollars ($50,000) for herself following the contract she signed with adidas took to social media to express her anger.

Reacting, Lekan in an exclusive interview argued that the AFN should be blamed for the omission of Favour Ofili name adding that if NOC had committed error, only federation has the opportunity to correct it through the window provided for them by the World Athletics (WA).

He explained: “There was a removal or an omission. It’s in two ways; if an athlete is omitted probably it was an error somewhere.

“But there are checks and balances even when one is omitted, the World Athletics (WA) will still publish the final list earlier enough which was done since July 12. I was able to see the list later when we searched for it on World Athletics unlike before when the AFN would make the list public and many experts talking about it.

In the list, 56 athletes were listed with Ofili name on it, so, there is no cause for alarm if Ofili’s name was still appearing there. This means, NOC must have sent her name in 100m for her name to show in the Road to Paris list, same thing with Tima Bless, she qualified in 100m and 200m but her name only showed in 100m on that particular page.

Even when AFN published their list of qualified athletes through Press Release signed by the Technical Director, Ofili and Tima Blessing were mentioned competing in 100m with Godson in 100m and 4x100m.

When the road to Paris engine was closed, all the names that were there must have been entered by NOC.

However, there are other windows for AFN to edit; remove or add if they have any. For example, the list will come from AFN and sent to NOC. NOC in return will send it to International Olympic Committee (IOC). IOC sends the list to World Athletics while World Athletics publish it for all member federations to see. Therefore, AFN supposed to have seen it when the World Athletics published it. So, if the email for the AFN to access the information on the worldathletics.org is available which is always with the Technical Director, Samuel Onikeku, Secretary General, Rita Mosindi or the President of the Federation, Tonobok Okowa, because these are the three persons that have access to it. But in this case, I think only the Secretary General has access to it. The Secretary General, Rita Mosindi of AFN is a staff of the Ministry.

Now, this is where and when I suspected the AFN remove her name. Since AFN is playing pranks with Seye Ogunlewe, they claimed only qualified athletes by automatic qualification can be entered which was a lie. Eventually they listed Kanyinsola to run 100m where she had qualified by ranking. But Seye won the national trial and merited to be entered and was entered.

They were forced to change their lies they told people on their publication that only automatic qualifier who are Brume and Favour Ashe must be in that list. At the end of the day, they still removed Godson’s name from the list they updated about the same time they must have removed Ofili’s 100m and Tima Godbless 200m. All these things are on the internet. We shouldn’t hurt this girl the second time after her disappointed outing at the last Olympic Games. She didn’t qualify for the 100m in Paris until she came to national trial in Nigeria to qualify. You can imagine the stress. At the end, when the list was out she saw her name, on the road to Paris engine, her name was there, but when World Athletics publish the list of the qualified athletes on July 12 that was when her name got missing.

Out of 56 that qualified by automatic or ranking, only Ofili’s name was missing, the same way Godson Brhume 100m and Tima Godbless 200m entry were removed. The World Athletics has to bring 17 from the preliminary rank consisting of unqualified athletes from nation who did not have qualifying athletes for the Olympics. Most countries pick 100m for their athletes. 37 of them (unqualified athletes) were presented in the preliminary where only 17 advanced. Usually they would have advanced 16 if Ofili name was on the list. In this case, 16+56 would have made 72 but they advanced 17 athletes because 55 (without Ofili) were available on the entry, so, they added 17 to 55 making 72. The 72 athletes formed the 8 heats. From the eight heats, they will have three Semifinals. It’s as simple as that.

Even if NOC had made mistake of omission, AFN would have spotted it when the list was published by World Athletics and WA would have entertained it. Remember, her name is still on the qualify list till now. That of Godless 200m is no longer, she can’t even say she want to run in that race in the competition because it has been replaced by another country. Same thing with Godson Brhume who was injured and instead of AFN to replace him with Ogunlewe they decided to just removed him from 100m race and left him to compete in 4x100m for him to have accreditation and be floating in the Games Village doing nothing.

“As we speak, most of these athletes are from Delta state, where Solomon Ogba hailed from. Solomon Ogba is the First Vice President of NOC, He’s the Chairman Athletics Association in Delta, the AFN President, Tonobok Okowa is from Delta, and the Secretary General of the AFN, Rita Mosindi, is also from Delta state.

To me, Solomon Ogba is in full control of this hide and seek game against some athletes. Remember in Cameroon, Ofili could not continue with her 100m, I believe this is a win, win for AFN to get back at her for not completing her race in Cameroon. On the flip side, it may be to reduce her workload so that she will be fresh for 4x100m and gives her more chances to be able to focus on her 200m race, so that she could hit the final and probably get a medal there.

So, the AFN saw it as a win-win situation but they could have consulted her and her coaching crew. The coaching crew could have been more focused about her individual performance.

“And again, she’s an adidas athlete, on her contract, she must make a final for her to collect bonuses. But as she’s been left out in an event that she could have been in the final, then she has lost money. The five thousand dollars for making the final is not enough like her appearance in the final where she will get Fifty thousand dollars on her contract. Can you just see the reason your federation refused to enter it? Painful.” He concluded