29092019 - 2023: Controversy over Pastor Tunde Bakare's prophecy on Buhari's

44—SUNDAY Vanguard, SEPTEMBER 29 , 2019
IAAF disqualifies Oduduru as Ekevwo falters
HIGHLY rated Ni
gerian sprinter,
Divine Oduduru may
have been banished from
the IAAF World Championships
on going in
Doha, Qatar.
The athlete was entered
for the men’s
100m, but he failed to
show up at the starting
blocks. And according to
IAAF rules, any athlete
duly registered for a
race, but made a noshow
without medically
explainable reason,
stands to be disqualified
from the championships.
Oduduru based on his
season’s best performance
of 9.86seconds
was a candidate for the
100m gold. The race will
be decided this evening.
And there will be no
Nigerian in the line up.
Raymond Ekevwo finished
10.20 seconds in
the semi final yesterday.
He couldn’t replicate a
shadow of the 9.96 he did
to win the African Games
100m in August.
Going into the final, US
athlete, Chris Coleman
established himself as
the man to beat. His 9.88
seconds run in the semi
final seems like a warmup
and it remains to be
seen how the likes of Justin
Gatlin, Johan Blake,
Andre de Grasse and
Akani Simbine can <strong>over</strong>haul
Coleman for the gold.
“It is a pity Oduduru is
not in the final. His situation
has been badly managed
by the AFN officials,”
said veteran coach Seigha
Porbeni.
“We have good chances
of winning a medal in the
sprints and relay, but that
may not happen now.”
Emmanuel Arowolo will
be running the 200m
heats today.
WAFU Cup: Imama hopeful as Eagles tackle Togo again
SUPER Eagles B are
primed to face the
Sparrow Hawks of Togo
today in both teams’ first
match at the WAFU Cup of
Nations in Thies, Senegal
and Nigeria’s Head Coach,
Imama Amapakabo is upbeat
about the opportunity
provided by a second meet
within one week.
Amapakabo, who spoke
to thenff.com at the team’s
Le Saly Hotel base in Saly-
Mbour, said the opportunity
to meet the Togolese is
cherished as it gives the
opportunity to properly
test his team’s level of improvement.
He said: “There’s nothing
like revenge in football. My
belief is that there are no
two games that can be the
same; once one game is
<strong>over</strong>, it is gone. And so meeting
Togo again is not really
a case of getting the opportunity
to revenge but an
opportunity to check what
lessons learnt from the previous
encounter with that
team.
“I can confidently say
that we have learnt our lesson
from what happened in
Lome and that will definitely
reflect in how we handle
tomorrow’s (Sunday)
game.
“Now we know them a lot
better and they equally
know us better than they
did. The good thing is that
we are meeting on a neutral
ground and this gives
both teams opportunity to
play without any inhibition.”
Nigeria’s home-based senior
players arrived in Saly
via Dakar on Thursday for
the 2nd WAFU-FOX Cup
of Nations which began in
the Senegalese city of
Thies on Saturday.
IAAF World Championships: AFN
pledges US$10,000 for gold medallists
THE Athletics Federa
tion of Nigeria, AFN at
the weekend assured the 25
athletes representing the
country at the on-going International
Association of
Athletics Federations, IAAF
World Championships in
Doha, Qatar that those who
win medals will be rewarded
Ȧccording to the Federation,
the Sponsorship
deal signed with PUMA,
provides that the Sports
Manufacturing Company
will pay US$10,000 to those
that win gold and US$3,000
silver medallists.
President of the federation,
Ibrahim Shehu Gusau
also revealed that bronze
medal winners will not be
left out as they are also
guaranteed US$2,000.
He therefore encouraged
the Technical Crew and
athletes to do their best and
bring glory to Nigeria and
honour to their names adding
that the monetary rewards
from PUMA is not the
end as more could come
from other sources.
President of the Nigeria
Olympic Committee, Habu
Gumel equally encouraged
the Athletes who won 10
Gold, 7 Silver and 6 Bronze
Medals at the 12th African
Games in Morocco in August
to re-enact that performance
and win especially
the gold medals that have
eluded Nigeria since the
IAAF World Championships
began in 1981 in Helsinki,
Gumel, Gusau congratulate Wophil on IAAF award
PRESIDENTS of the
Nigeria Olympic
Committee, NOC, Habu
Gumel and that of the
Athletics Federation of
Nigeria, AFN, Ibrahim
Shehu Gusau have congratulated
former AFN
Secretary General, Maria
Wophil on her award
from the International
Association of Athletics
Federations, IAAF, during
its 52nd Congress in
Doha, Qatar.
Wophil, who is the
longest serving Secretary
General of the AFN,
from 1999 to 2012
was the second in Africa
and 13th in the World
that received the Pin of
honour from IAAF President,
Sebastian Coe at
the Doha International
Convention Centre for
her long years of service
to Athletics.
Wophil thanked the
IAAF and members of the
*Oduduru
*Gusau
IAAF Family who contributed
to her achievements
in Athletics <strong>over</strong>
the years for the award
while praising God for
taking her to the podium
of honour.
Wophil is now a Deputy
Director with the
Ministry of Youth and
Sports Development,
Abuja, Nigeria and a
Board Member of the
Athletics Federation of
Nigeria.
*Amapakabo
*Gumel
2nd Amuwo Games hold in November, says Ayeni
By Tolulope Abereoje
AFTER the maiden
edition held in 2017,
Amuwo Odofin Local G<strong>over</strong>nment
is set to hold the
2nd edition of the Amuwo
Games from November 2 to
24, 2019 at designated centres
within the local g<strong>over</strong>nment.
Speaking on the organization
of the Games festival,
the Youth Coordinator of the
Amuwo Games, Seun Ayeni
revealed that the games
will be run every weekend
in November for residents of
the community, and that cycling
and video games were
added to further engage the
youths.
“Amuwo Games is a festival
that will run throughout
the month of November and
we carefully selected weekends
so that we will have
people from all works of life
participating, so long as
you’re a resident. Amuwo
Games is for residents of
Amuwo Odofin LGA. The
games we’d be having are
the common ones like football,
basketball, volleyball,
tennis and table tennis. For
athletics we have 100m men
and women, and the marathon,”
he said.
He continued: “For the
board games, we have
chess, scrabble and draft was
brought in this year so that
the aged can participate.
Another sport we introduced
this year is cycling
because we were approached
last year by the
Cyclofest team who promised
to help us organize it.
We will also have video
games as part of the games
this year.. The <strong>over</strong>all objective
of this festival is youth
development.”
Minister Dare please
rescue Basketball
IGERIA's senior men's national basketball team,
ND'Tigers put up a superb performance at the recently
concluded FIBA World Cup in China. They lost their first
game to Russia despite leading at a time by eight points.
They also lost their second game to Argentina but beat
South Korea in the last group game to keep their hope of
picking an automatic Olympic ticket alive.
They turned out as the best African team and placed 17
on the table to pick the automatic African ticket for the
2020 Tokyo Olympics.
The basketball fraternity was happy with the feat which
was coming a few weeks after their female counterparts,
the D'Tigress retained their African title at the 2019
Afrobasketball deceided in Senegal.
The good news about the FIBA World Cup performance
of the Ike Diogu inspired D'Tigers was their new rating by
FIBA which put them on the 23rd position in the world
while retaining their number one position in Africa. And
the celebration by the Musa Kida faction of the NBBF has
not ceased since then.
They have been flaunting the new ranking together with
the commendation of D'Tigers by FIBA as if it was the best
thing ever to have happened to Nigeria's basketball.
While I commend the players who made Nigeria proud, I
must state here that the new sports minister Sunday Dare
should not be deceived by the self adulation of Kida and
his co-travelers in the factional NBBF.
It must be put on record that before now, there was a set
of administrators of the NBBF who took Nigeria's basketball
to a new height in 2012 when they qualified the men's
national team for their first Olympics. And this happened
through a much tougher OQT, Olympic Qualifying Tournament
in Venezuela where they defeated tougher opponents.
Drawn alongside Lithuania and Venezuela in group B,
D'Tigers lost their first game 69-71 to host Venezuela and
won the second against Lithuania 86-80. In the quarter
finals, they raised their game once again and beat Greece
80-79 before losing the semi final 77-85 to Russia.
In the third place match, they won against Dominican
Republic 88-73 and thus qualified for the London Olympics
that year. By that performance, Nigeria's rating soared
and FIBA ranked the country 16 in the world at the time.
And this was achieved under a Nigerian coach, Ayo Bakare.
Following the feat, FIBA Africa was expecting D'Tigers to
step in as the new kings of African basketball. But injury
didn't allow them achieve their dream at the 2013 Afrobasket
which was hosted by Cote d'Ivoire. The players were
disappointed though but vowed to bounce back and take
what belonged to them during the next edition.
And this was eventually achieved in 2015 in Tunisia,
though under a new coach, an American William Voigt.
And this happened under an NBBF led by Tijjani Umar.
Yet he didn't role out the drums in self adulation like it is
being done now.
Instead, he and his team sat down to build on the success.
In fact the D'Tigers who were treated by sports wear
manufacturing company, Nike, as second rate became the
new bride in Africa. Nike which was not interested in raising
the value of the kit contract it had with the NBBF came
begging after D'Tigers conquered their favoured team, Angola.
But it was too late as a more proactive Chinese firm, PEAK
had started discussing with the NBBF on the matter, even
before the semi final clash with Senegal at the 2015 Afrobasket
in Tunisia,
NBBF struck a better kit deal with PEAK which included
funding the D'Tigers participation in international tournaments
in any competition year. They also promised to assist
the NBBF in building a befitting secretariat.
The benefit of the new image of Nigeria's basketball did
not end with the national team, which one of the pretenders
running the factional NBBF today described cynically
as “foreigners”. It rubbed off on the domestic league as an
international organisation, Kwese Sports, signed a 5-year
sponsorship deal with the NBBF for the Premier Basketball
League which was titled Kwese Premier League.
The deal was worth US$12 million and was already eliciting
so much excitement from the stakeholders who prepared
to put in their best to make the league second to none
in Africa. In the first year of the sponsorship, NBBF announced
a mouth-watering N20million as prize money for
the winner of the league while the first and second runersup
got N15million and N10million respectaively. This shook
the entire country as it had never happened before. It even
pushed football to hike its prize money to N25million in
order not to be 'disgraced', as it were, by basketball.
Before the deal was even struck, following the success of
D'Tigers at the Afrobasket, FIBA had sent one of its supervisors,
Lubomir Kotleba to visit the NBBF to see how they can
support the federation to ensure they continued with the
development of the game in the country which they saw as
having so much potentials.
Kotleba, in one of his meetings with the basketball stakeholders,
affirmed that with the quality of talents Nigeria
has, no country in Africa was supposed to contest leadership
of the sport with her. He advised that all the stakeholders
of the sport should come together to run the sport more
professionally to harness the enormous potentials the country
was endowed with. His parting shot was that what Nigeria
lacked and which the Angolans are cashing in on to
retain leadership of the sport in Africa was administration.
It was as if the seasoned FIBA official was a seer and knew
that before lomg, some desperate people will throw spanners
into the wheel of progress the NBBF was making in
administration. The confusion they created with the support
of someone in whose care the g<strong>over</strong>nment put the supervision
of all sports in the country has not abated. And the
country has not rec<strong>over</strong>ed from it till date as the domestic
programmes of basketball is in a comatose state. Forget the
seeming stride the women's league is making. It is all a
ruse. And the impostors know it.
The way it is now, only the new sports minister, Sunday
Akin Dare could rescue basketball, and all other sports being
mismanged today, from total destruction.