Team Nigeria Athletes Cry Foul over Poor Condition at the Games

Duro Ikhazuagbe in Rio

Despite not winning any medal so far at the ongoing 31st Olympic Games here in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, officials of Team Nigeria who are not bothered by the poor outing so far, are smiling, going on shopping spree with a lot of dollars in their pockets.

Majority of these Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports officials are collecting between $300 to $400 dollars per day while the athletes are on $150.

Some of the athletes who spoke here monday said most of them who were asked to pay their ways from their respective locations in Europe to Nigeria before travelling in group to Brazil are yet to get their refunds.

Take the case of the table tennis players, Aruna Quadri who got to the quarter final of the singles event before being edged out by world number one player, Ma Long of China, is yet to get his ticket refund. Same as Olufunke Oshonaike and Segun Toriola.
They are expected to leave camp tomorrow.

Team Nigeria camp also revealed yesterday that athletes are going through hell to train here as there are no vehicles to take them to the various training venues.

“Our officials refused to pay the official rates for the Brazilian drivers attached to the four vehicles allocated to Team Nigeria. So the drivers are not driving us,” cried one of the athletes at the Games Village.

It was also learnt that instead of these Nigerian officials to pay $9,000 for six rooms for the basketball team before the games began because they claimed not to have money, they ended paying $20,000 for only two rooms when they arrived here.

“Is that not stupidity of the highest order? They knew that majority of the basketball players are bigger than the normal beds provided in the athletes villages and should have made provision to accommodate them but chose not to do so,” our source further revealed.

Most federation presidents here are also believed to have rejected the peanuts offered to them as allowance by the ministry officials.

They were offered allowance for just few days as against the 21 days most of them are going to spend here.

With barely six days to end of competition with no sign of Team Nigeria getting on the medals table, these same officials who have been carrying on as if they cared less are beginning to express fears for what may happen when they get back to Abuja.