By Daniel Esebre)
Yet more confusion is brewing around the hosting and participation of Team Nigeria’s in the 2020 Para Powerlifting World Cup scheduled to open in Abuja in a couple of days.
Latest scoops around the event indicate that the President of the Federation, Queen Uboh, may be in disagreement with the Ministry of Sports over the number of athletes to be presented by Team Nigeria at the competition.
Inside sources said from the last preparatory camp activities, the Ministry of Sports, being the owner and manager of Team Nigeria to every international event, settled for 30 lifters (20 seniors and 10 juniors) while the rest were decamped during the weekend but it has been discovered that, in defiance of the ministry, the top leadership of the federation has asked many of the decamped athletes and officials to return back to the camp.
“This whole Powerlifting World Cup keeps spinning from one confusion to the other. From the division in the board between the President and majority of the members, to the division among the athletes into two separate camps in Lagos and Abuja, the new conflict now is about the number of athletes to be featured in the competition,” lamented our source which pleaded anonymity.
“The Ministry is in charge of Team Nigeria. Nobody, no federation can present Team Nigeria in any international event without the approval of the ministry. The ministry bent back to unite all the athletes from the two camps in Abuja and Lagos and conducted a final trials in which 20 senior and 10 junior athletes were selected to make up Team Nigeria for the event. The unselected athletes were duly decamped with their entitlements and transport paid and, in fact, they had left camp. Now, we are hearing that someone has instructed them to come back to the camp with only a few days to the event. That is a deliberate attempt to cause confusion that can possibly present us in negative light.
“There surely must be a limit to the number of athletes to any event. We had about 150 athletes in camp. Certainly not all would be chosen. This is a Paralympic Qualifier, it can’t be all comers. We know how many slots we can vie for. We know the number of powerlifters we can manage to the Paralympics. The ministry has settled for 30. The Minister has approved. This latest move to call back decamped athletes without the approval of the ministry and no visible source of provision for them is not only an aberration and an affront on the order of governance of our sports, it can lead to divisions and cliques among the athletes such as can affect team spirit into the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games.”
Our source also complained that there are scanty details on the protocol agreements on hosting of the event both to the ministry and other members of the board, a situation which he rued as posing challenges in the reception and allocation of facilities to visiting contingents and officials.
“As we speak, details of the protocol on the hosting is only scantily available to members of the board and even the ministry. There is so much secrecy and shrouding. Even the international body has refused to disclose information to guide the organisation. They say the information on agreement is classified and only accessible to the Main Organising Committee set up unilaterally by the President of the federation. That excludes officials of the ministry and other board members.
“We have tried to cope with this side blinding because of the involvement of the office of the First Lady and her personal effort in sourcing funds for the event but the level of insubordination to the proper order of governance of Team Nigeria and the lack of transparency on virtually every issue and aspect of this event is strangely unbecoming.”
The Powerlifting family came into the new year in confusion over the choice of camping place for the athletes. While the Ministry of Sports and a section of the board of the Federation insisted on Abuja, the President of the Federation was said to have favoured a camp in Lagos which is said to host more standard facilities. Added to that were other conflicts on the involvement of junior athletes and the exclusion of some coaches in the camp.
It took the intervention of the Minister of Sports who called all the stakeholders to a roundtable at which it was resolved that Abuja was most appropriate as camp since the competition is to hold there, while accommodation was made for the junior lifters as well as the excluded officials.
