Olympic Games: C’Riverians Queue Behind Owan Enoh Amidst Calls For His Sack

Cletus ASUQUO, Calabar

Some indigenes of Cross River State have arisen in defence of the minister of sports development, Senator John Owan Enoh, amidst calls for his sack by President Bola Tinubu, days after Nigeria returned from the 2024 Olympic Games without a medal.

Owan Enoh is a Cross Riverian and his people believe that the minister did his best as required of his office and did not deserve to be pilloried by those who felt he would have performed some magic for Nigeria to win some medals.

One of those who called for his sack is a human right lawyer Deji Adeyanju who wrote an open letter to Tinubu in that regard.

According to him, the sports minister showed a lack of preparation as well as an unwilling spirit to learn from the experience of  others before him.

He accused the minister of gross incompetence and a failure, who had fail to implement the National Sports Industry Policy and  abandoned sports facilities across the country.

But one of the natives who responded to Adeyanju’s call said in a social media post that “if Adeyanju is looking for who president Tinubu should sack for under performance, I kindly recommend Prince Shuaibu Abubakar Audu who have(sic) completely failed as Minister of Steel Development, who is a kinsman of Deji  from Kogi state and has never been in the news for both negative or positive reasons since after inauguration.

“Senator Senator John Owan Enoh-JOE , who resumed office as Minister of sports have(sic) performed extremely well at AFCON and All African Games. The fact that Nigeria had a  poor performance in the  just concluded Paris Olympics 2024 doesn’t warrant Deji to call for the sacking of Owan Enoh who has shown transparency and patriotism to the point of owning up and taking responsibility of(sic) the failure of our athletic federation.”

Another native, Dr Inyali Peter who also responded to Adeyanju’s call for Owan Enoh’s queried the rationale for the call, asking, “why is no one holding the Nigeria Olympic Committee (NOC) and Athletic Federation of Nigeria (AFN) accountable?

“They are directly responsible for the team’s performance, yet they’re being let off scot-free. This is the same thing they did with Dr. Betta Edu. Edu’s suspension was a product of media war not the alleged infraction. The Minister of Interior was accused of almost the same thing as Edu but his people came out to defend him and never allowed it to gain momentum in the media.

“They’re deploying a similar strategy they used against Dr. Edu against the Minister of Sports because there are some ministries in this country that some people consider their exclusive reserve.

“The Minister’s supervisory role over the AFN does not include anything technical. His role was to provide logistical support and to ensure the government provided the funds requested by the technical officials for the competition. This he did with great effectiveness. It’s surprising that instead of people commending and encouraging him, he has suddenly become the target.”