21st September, 2012
Crisis looms between the country’s athletes to the recently concluded London 2012 Paralympic Games and the officials of the National Sports Commission (NSC) over the Federal Government largesse, as the athletes are set to petition the Presidency.
President Goodluck Jonathan, had announced monetary awards to the athletes and their officials for making the country proud at the Games during a ceremony to honour the athletes and officials last weekend.
Goodluck had announced N5million for gold medalists, N3million for silver, N2.5 for bronze and N500,000 for all athletes that did not win any medal, and N2.5million each for all the accompanying officials, coaches, secretaries, medical team members and the loaders.
To the surprise of the athletes they have been shortchanged by the NSC officials with only medalists being paid fully.
Some of the coaches, who craved anonymity, disclosed that only N1million was paid to their bank accounts by the officials of the NSC. A member of the medical team said that he got an alert for N1million, while the 3 loaders, according to investigation, were paid N500,000 as against N2.5million announced by the president.
The affected officials have resolved to petition the Presidency over this ugly trend wondering why the NSC officials should disregard Jonathan’s publicised directive.
“We have resolved to petition the Presidency over this development because this took us by surprise. We want to know if the president has changed his mind without informing us.”