Nigeria may not be able to defend the African Athletics Youth Championship title in Mauritius when hostilities begin later this week following the dire straight financial position of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN).
Team Nigeria won the maiden edition in Warri two years ago with 13 gold, 10 silver and 12 bronze medals leaving Egypt Kenya and Ethiopian to struggle for the second, third and fourth positions.
After completing the selection trials to pick the country’s representatives at the Yaba College of Technology in Lagos mid last week, the athletes and their coaches were expected to go into camping immediately but that got stalled due to lack of money.
AFN sources revealed at the weekend that all efforts to get the National Sports Commission (NSC) to release the approved money for the trip has proved abortive.
“As I speak with you now, we don’t even know what has happened to the file for the trip at the NSC. All that we are hearing is that there is no money. You can imagine that Nigeria as defending champion of the African Youth Championship will not be there when the event starts. Is that not an embarrassment for the country,” observed the track & field coach.
Team Nigeria’s contingent is billed to travel out tomorrow to be able to reach Mauritius and loosen up before the start of competition.
“If the team fails to travel by Tuesday, I cannot guarantee if jet-lag will not affect their performance,” reasoned the coach.
All attempts to speak with the AFN scribe, Olumide Bamiduro, failed as he was said to be at the NSC pursuing how to get the needed funds to enable the team travel out.
Hi. I’m a Web Developer and Graphics Designer, I enjoy blogging as part-time and I draw a lot when I’m free. Thanks for visiting my blog today and I hope you come back next time.
0 comments:
Post a Comment