Team Nigeria athletes are crying foul over the refusal of the Sports Ministry to pay them their ticket refunds after they were instructed to arrange for their flight tickets from their various locations in Europe.
Table tennis star, Aruna Quadri, who got to the quarter final of the singles event before being edged out by world number one player, Ma Long of China, was yet to get his ticket refund.
Same as Funke Oshonaike and Segun Toriola.
The athletes are expected to leave camp on Wednesday after the end of their event in the Olympics.
Camp sources also revealed that athletes are going through hell to train as there were no vehicles to take them to the various training venues.
“Our officials refused to pay the official rates for the Brazilian drivers attached to the four vehicles allocated to Team Nigeria. So, the drivers are not driving us,” cried one of the athletes.
It was also learnt that instead of these Nigerian officials to pay $9,000 for six rooms for the basketball team before the games began because they claimed not to have money, they ended paying $20,000 for only two rooms when they arrived.
The source stated that the Sports Ministry officials have been taking irrational decisions. On the basketball players, they knew that majority of the players are bigger than the normal beds provided in the athletes villages and should have made provision to accommodate them but chose not to do so,” our source further revealed.
Most Nigerian Sports Federation presidents who are in Rio on invitation of the ministry have rejected the peanuts offered to them as allowance by the ministry officials.
They were offered allowance for just few days “as against the 21 days most of them are going to spend here”.
