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Nigeria: Ajunwa, Adamu Differ On Athletes' Training Grant
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Vanguard (Lagos)
4 May 2008
Posted to the web 5 May 2008
Patrick Omorodion
Lagos
Nigeria's first individual Olympic gold medalist, Chioma Ajunwa has disagreed with the Director-General of the National Sports Commission (NSC), Dr. Amos Adamu over the special training grants promised Nigerian athletes preparing for this summer's Olympic Games in Beijing, China.
Her views came moments after Professor Tunde Makanjuola, chairman, Lagos State Athletics Association decried the failure of the NSC to pay athletes training grants with less than four months to the Olympic Games.
According to Ajunwa, a Deputy Superintendent of Police, any money coming to any athlete at this moment is no longer a training grant as it will not serve the purpose it was meant for because all Olympics bound athletes would have concluded their programme.
She said on a Brila FM sports programme monitored in Lagos that "the money should instead be called motivation grant" as she expressed her disappointment that athletes are yet to get the money despite the claims by Dr. Adamu
"The money is more or less a motivation grant because it should have been given the athletes about a year earlier to enable them take care of their training for the Olympics," she said
On the same Brila FM programme, the Director-General who was reacting to the feat of Olusoji Fasuba and Damilola Osiyemi, both of whom won the men and women 100 metres gold at the African Athletics Championship in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Thursday, said that he was happy with the performance, stressing that the NSC has released the training grants to all the deserving athletes.
Asked when th training grants were released to the athletes, Dr. Adamu said the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) would be in a better position to say that. But the athletes had complained even before leaving for Ethiopia that no grant has been given to them
Professor Makanju stated in the interview with Brila FM that grants should be given early and monitoring of the athletes would then commence in earnest.
"This is one issue that should not drag on at all. Training grants should be done years ahead, so that the athletes can go wherever they want for personal training.
"All the federation would then be expected to do would be to check on their current form, through regular monitoring of the athletes.
They will then be called together for the main competition," he said.
While Dr. Adamu was elated over the feat of Fasuba and Osiyemi, Ajunwa, who leapt 7.12 metres at the Atlanta '96 Olympics to beat Italy's Fiona May to the gold, said the athletes still need to work on their race as the times returned by them were slow times.
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"To be able to get medals at the Olympic Games they should work harder because their times were not too fantastic," she advised even as she commended them for their effort.
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