Judo Boss Hails Sports Minister Over Federation Secretaries Redeployment

OKAFOR MOSES CHINEDU

Reactions have continued to trail Tuesday’s announcement of the redeployment of all the secretaries of sports federations by the Honourable Minister of Sports, Barrister Solomon Dalung. 

The latest commendation is coming from one of the bigwigs of Nigerian Judo, Alhaji Damisa Suleiman, who is the  North Central Zone representative on the board of Nigeria Judo Federation. He said that the shake up was long overdue as some of the secretaries had constituted themselves as clogs in the wheels of progress in the sports federations over the years.

According to Alhaji Suleiman, “the Sports Minister, Barrister Solomon Dalung deserved our commendation for taking the bold step with the shake up. Since the exist of former Sports Minister, Abdullahi Bolaji, the sports ministry has never been the same due to some powerful cabals that have been untouchable particularly among the federations secretaries.

“This can be seen from the poor performances in sports for the past years. It is a welcome surgical operations taken by the Honourable Minister.”

The Judo boss said that good thing is happening within Nigerian Judo family as the game is witnessing repositioned process among other Olympic medal spinners. He disclosed that the federation has succeeded in observing the prolonged election of the Judo coaches and a new executive has since been inaugurated.

“Judo now has good coaches executives, ” he told PM EXPRESS. Alhaji Suleiman thanked various stakeholders that stood behind justice to see that Judo remains one strong great family, particularly the various state directors and zonal directors as all board members are only superintendents.

Under the new postings of the federation secretaries, the likes of Segun Oguntade, Olumide Bamiduro, Gloria Ekwempu, Ademu Elijah, Beyioku Niyi, Abobi Patrick and Olalekan Alabi were redeployed to the Federation and  Elite Athletes Department, FEAD, while Patrick Okeke, Clement Iyaluegbehe, Ajao Olufemi, Ganiyu-Opolo Abidemi and Dapo Akinyele were posted to Grassroots Sports Development.

Chinedu Ezealah, Thecla Opara and Iwang Isreal will now move to Sports Planning, Research and Documentation, Uche Onwumeh and Mbora Ikana are deployed to the Lagos Liason office, while Onyeka Emeka Augustine, Birma Buba Ademu and Ogenyi Queen move to Human Resource Management.

In the re-deployment , a new set of ministry staff were assigned to the federations which hitherto were managed by those posted to the ministry departments, while the others were moved to other federations.