Nigerian Athletes that were to represent Nigeria at the Rio 2016 took to social media to state that the government had told them to pay their way to Brazil and appealed to individuals and corporate entities to help fund them.
Reacting to the allegation, minister of sports, Solomon Dalung has released a press release saying that the allegations are false and that they never asked the athletes to pay for their fare.
The press release said, “The Ministry of Youth and Sports Development says it did not direct foreign-based athletes going to the Olympic Games in Rio to buy their own air tickets.
“The Minister of Youth and Sports Barrister Solomon Dalung said this in a statement following a purported mail asking athletes to buy their tickets to the Olympics and which was said to have originated from the Ministry. Barrister Dalung stated that the Director, High Performance Angie Taylor has been saddled with the responsibility of arranging for the flights and movement of the foreign based athletes to and from Rio.
“We did not write any mail asking athletes to pay their way to Rio. As the overseers of sports in the country, it is our duty to take care of all our athletes. The letter did not come from us and we will investigate the writer of that letter. It does not represent our stand concerning the movement of athletes to Rio and the writer or anybody asking athletes to buy their tickets to Rio will be investigated. We ask Nigerians and athletes in particular to disregard the mail” Dalung said. The
The minister however, regretted the embarrassment caused by the letter and asked athletes to remain focused on their build-up to the Rio games.