USA Comes To The Rescue, As 30 Nigerian Athletes Secure Visas For Olympic Qualifiers

Nigeria’s Sports Ministry has expressed appreciation to the US government for supporting the country’s journey to the Olympics when it granted 30 Nigerian athletes Visas in record time.

The US Embassy moved quickly to provide an early date for interviews and eventually helped out Olympic bound athletes to secure the visas needed. The US Ambassador was particularly understanding and helpful. The phone calls by the Nigerian Foreign Affairs Minister in the presence of the Youth Minister was very helpful.

“This is the kind of support and understanding we expect always. The United States has again demonstrated its support for Nigerian sports and youth development and the Nigerian government is grateful,” a staff of the Ministry said.

On the other hand, the Polish embassy did not grant the visas and insisted on a two-week processing window. All entreaties from the highest levels of the Nigerian government was rebuffed by the Polish embassy.

Nigeria’s athletes are set for both Europe, USA and Nigeria for camping and competitions.

It must be noted that only top 16 relay teams/ times will participate at the Tokyo Olympics. The Ministry is properly guided and Team Nigeria is not in any jeopardy.

Both the Sports Ministry and Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) had anticipated that the disgraced former president of the AFN,Mr Shehu Ibrahim Gusau would block the registration of Nigerian athletes for the event as he illegally held on to the official password of the federation and moved to organise a few meetings in the USA to ensure the teams get the chance to still qualify for the Olympics.

The AFN led by acting president,Olamide George was only availed the opportunity to register the team following the intervention of the two-man Confederation of African Athletics team that came to Abuja last week to resolve the conflict within the AFN.

‘We did not get to officially register the team until Thursday last week and apply for entry visas at the Polish Embassy. Upon our application, the Polish Embassy insisted it would take two weeks to process the visa applications and all entreaties for a quick consideration were ignored,” said Niyi Beyioku, the AFN Secretary General.

‘The Sports Minister, Chief Sunday Dare had to involve the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to ensure we get the team visas to Poland but the embassy stood its ground and after consultations with the Sports Ministry, we decided to switch to our second plan which was to convert a pre-arranged training tour to inlcude qualification for the five relay events. The AFN wants to assure Nigerians that our relay teams will be in Tokyo come this July,” said Beyioku.

‘The World Relay does not close the qualification window for the Tokyo Olympics. We have other events that we have mentioned and also the African Athletics Championships holding in June in Algiers, Algeria. So, we have quite a number of opportunities to achieve our aim of getting Nigerian relay teams to the Olympics,” Beyioku added and berated Mr Gusau for putting personal interest above the interest of over 200m Nigerians who are eagerly looking forward to the relay teams to win more medals for Nigeria like they have been doing since 1984 when the men’s 4x400m won the first medal in track and field for Nigeria.

The relay teams have won eight of the 13 medals Nigerian have won at the Olympics from track and field.