AFN Denies Gusau World Athletics Impending Life Ban
By Amaechi Agbo
The Athletics Federation of Nigeria, AFN, has denied report that the president of the federation, Ibrahim Gusau could face life ban, Bestchoicesports.com.ng can report.
Report emerged Monday claiming that the embattled president could face life ban after 9 board members of the federation was reported to have submitted the president to the World Athletics, WA over alleged corruption against Mr Gusau.
Reacting to the report, the AFN Technical Director, Sunday Adeleye told Bestchoicesports.com.ng Monday that the story is fake and a fictitious creation of a nameless writer.
Mr Adeleye noted that when the federation got wind of the story on Sunday, they wanted to release a statement to warn people to disregard the story but when the board realized that the story had no author of medium where it emanated from, they disregarded it.
“I saw one publication you put out, (on Monday) unfortunately, that story is a strange to us. We saw it yesterday (Sunday) and we were about to put out a warning about the publication because that publication is from an anonymous sender.
“If somebody is writing or is given something to write, he should claim responsibility by putting his name. But that publication has no name, nobody wrote his name on it. Other media houses contacted me over it and I drew their attention to it,” Mr Adeleye said.
He wondered why somebody could write such a story with appending his/her name on it. He noted that the ghost writer was merely causing confusion and asked Nigerians to ignore the report.
“How can somebody write and not put his name or the office it is coming out from so that at the end of the day, the media house will not be held liable. If I am writing a story, I will put my name or it is from my office. But nobody did that, the person just put it out and kept quiet just to continue to cause problems, confusion everywhere.
“We and the media are partners in progress and then enough of these bad news, fake stories, fake news and causing confusion everywhere.”
He concluded that the AFN “Don’t have anything to say about the story because it has no name and it is anonymous.”
Meanwhile the AFN has won another case against the federal ministry of youth and sports following the quashing of appeal instituted by the ministry against the AFN.
Ruling on the case last week, the Appeal court dismissed the appeal filed by the ministry for lack of merit.