July 13, (THEWILL) – After allegedly being unjustly excluded from Team Nigeria, representing the country at the World Championships slated to begin on Friday, in Oregon, United States, Alaba Akintola and Ezinne Abba, took to social media to angrily criticise sports governance in the country.
Abba felt the pain most because she was previously listed and was supposedly dropped only 40 minutes before boarding her flight to Oregon, while Akintola is bitterly upset because, though he was never included in Team Nigeria’s roster to Oregon, he met the qualification standards.
They accused the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) and the Sports authorities of bias and ineptitude on their Instagram sites. Akintola, a student at Middle Tennessee State University, made a significant contribution to Nigeria’s success in the Men’s 4x100m Relay and was preparing to make his debut at the World Championships, but his ambition has been scuttled.
He posted, in part: “Sadly, I’m going to be out of world championship after I qualified for 3 events (100M, 200M, & 4*100M) not because I failed dope, but because of politics, because that’s what it looks like rn; they hid under the umbrella of OCT (out of competition test).”
Abba, a 21-year-old, who recently switched to representing Nigeria from the United States, is distraught by how her dream has been dashed by the sports authorities. She wrote: “They speak repeatedly about trying to fix the broken system that is Nigerian Athletics by firing and hiring all new staff, but the corruption still lives. I, unfortunately, will not be competing at worlds or the commonwealth games.”
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
