New AFN Board Members at War over Constitution of Sub-committees
After returning from its first outing at the 16th IAAF World Championships in London with no medal, the newly constituted board of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN), is embroiled in personality clash that may further drag the fortunes of track & field in the country deep into oblivion.
Majority members of the AFN board are accusing its President, Ibrahim Gusau, of running the federation like a personal fief.
Gusau who is a former member of the Federal House of Representatives is being accused of single handedly constituting committees for the federation.
Last Tuesday, the AFN Secretary General, Amaechi Akawo, released a list of committee members supposedly approved by the federation board.
But in a swift move, the Vice-president of the federation, Olamide George and other members of the board, discountenanced the list.
They insisted that there was no board meeting where such decisions were reached.
The board members therefore called on athletics aficionados to dismiss the purported list as it did not emanate from the AFN board that has the constitutional mandate to constitute and approve the sub-committees.
“As far as we are concerned, the sub-committees of the AFN have not been constituted because the board has not met to deliberate on them and other issues necessary to enable us hit the ground running especially after our participation at the IAAF World Championships in London last month,” said George, a former national 400m hurdler.
To ensure fairness, George who is a member of the Ondo State House of Assembly called on Gusau to call a board meeting to iron out the issue of constituting sub committees.
“I remember I called on the President, Honourable Ibrahim Gusau to urgently call for a board meeting to enable us review our performance at the 16th IAAF World Championships in London and map out technical and marketing plans for 2018 which is two seasons in one for us.
“The Commonwealth Games is coming up in April 2018 while the African Championships will hold in July/August which means we should have hit the ground running as soon as the World Championships ended in London. I am thus shocked to hear that the sub-committees have been constituted without the knowledge of board members because there was no board meeting called to that effect,” revealed George to reporters in Lagos yesterday.
Brown Ebewele, the man elected to head the technical arm of the AFN believes the purported list was a joke carried too far.
“As far as I am concerned, the AFN sub-committees have not been constituted and the board will meet soon to constitute them as stipulated by the code of governance handed over to the AFN by the Sports Ministry during our inauguration,” stressed Ebewele.
Sports Writers Association of Nigeria (SWAN) representative on the board of the AFN, Dare Esan, told THSIDAY that he was not aware of any subcommittee constituted in the federation.
Esan was particularly shocked that the federation’s president could unilaterally constitute the sub-committees.
“All over the world the position of the technical committee chairman or technical director of an athletics federation has always been filled by individuals with huge coaching experience and background in sports science because sports, especially track and field has gone really scientific.”