By Ben Efe
Former national decathlon champion, Brown Ebewele has urged Athletics enthusiasts to speak softly in their criticism of the present board of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria headed by Solomon Ogba.

Solomon Ogba

Ebewele, who is also a former commissioner for sports in Edo State argued that the woes of Nigeria’s athletics was down to systemic failure of successive sports administrations at the national level. He was speaking against the back ground of lack lustre performances of the athletes at the national trials for the World Championships and  the All Africa Games in which, world standards were hardly attained even as records were broken.

“Athletics would have been dead without Ogba. Agreed that he has his short comings, but these flaws greatly outweigh his achievements at the AFN.

“Take for instance, Cross River pulled out of sponsoring the Championships. But Ogba did everything for the show to go on. If the trials hadn’t held, how would we have assessed our athletes for the World Championships and All Africa Games?”

He submitted that the government must live up to its responsibility in sports funding. “During my time we stayed in camp from January to January unlike now where you have athletes going hungry and begging for support.”