Sports Ministry Paid Enekwechi $1,000 To Pulldown Video Of Him Washing Jersey, AFN Vice President Claims

The Vice President of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria Sunday Omotayo Adeleye has alleged that the Ministry of Sports and Youth Development paid Nigerian shot-put athlete at Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Chukwuebuka Enekwechi, to pull down an embarrassing video he posted ahead of the shot-put finals on his Tiktok account and his Instagram page.

Adeleye made the accusation on Thursday on Arise Tv programme ‘The Morning Show,’ monitored by THE WHISTLER.

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He alleged, “The same video that came out that Chukwuebuka posted; thank God it was a video and the guy tweeted again that he thanked the minister for his support. $1,000 was given to the guy to take down the video. So, what are we doing? What are we hiding? What are we covering?”

A fact-check by THE WHISTLER revealed that there was no tweet where Enekwechi “thanked the minister for his support” as at the time of the report.

Also, efforts to reach the Ministry of Sports for comments were not successful as calls and a text message sent to Ramon Balogun, Assistant Director, Press was not responded to as of 1pm on Thursday.

The Olympian who eventually lost the final on Thursday ending 12th position had posted a video of himself washing jersey after an event that secured his qualification for the 12 -man final.

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“When you made the Olympic Finals, but you only have one jersey,” Enekwechi wrote on the video.

The TikTok video was uploaded by the athlete on his Instagram page, @thechuksay, but was deleted.

The issue was heightened on Wednesday when PUMA terminated the contract it signed with Ibrahim Gusau, the President of the Federation worth $2.76m on July 24, 2019, in Doha and due to expire in 2022.

Based on the contract, the German wear company will supply clothes to Nigeria’s Athletics team for four years without a dime spent by the government.

The kits were reportedly collected and taken to Tokyo.

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But the sports ministry violated a clause in the agreement when it banned Nigerian athletes at the Olympics from wearing the PUMA brand over an alleged contract which it said was “subject to a criminal investigation”.

Adele claimed the deal was not shady and clothed with secrecy.

” First of all, I want to clarify this, I have documents where the Secretary-General of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria- a staff of the Ministry of Youth and Sports signed and gave us a mandate to search for sponsorship,” he said, showing some documents.

He continued, “This is another document where the President of the Federation signed, the representative of Dynamic Sporting Solution signed.

“Here again is the signature of the Secretary General of the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports signed dated 15th September 2018. We have documents that even said the Minister should give us a waiver to clear this document (the shipments). Before the agreement was signed, the then Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports was aware.

“The documents were transmitted to him to sign the agreement and for him to witness, because he is not a party to it, but unfortunately then the Honourable Minister was out of office, so the Permanent Secretary was in charge of the Ministry and he said that he was very busy at the moment. He wished us well and for us to go ahead and do the right thing and he thanked us for bringing this kind of thing to Nigeria.

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“Even he came out clearly and said that there was a circular from the former Chief of Staff (Abba Kyari) may his soul rest in peace where he said the parastatals should go and look for sponsors and funding and he congratulated us. So, if the minister is saying that he is not aware, that is white lie and that is not true. The ministry is aware.”

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