Dichotomy between foreign, home-based athletes unhealthy, Ojeli tells govt

• Still in shock over 4x400m relay team’s disqualification
A member of Team Nigeria to the Paris 2024 Olympics, Emmanuel Ojeli, has described some of the controversies that dogged the country’s participation at the Games as avoidable.
  
Ojeli, a 400m runner, who made his second Olympics appearance in Paris, said, yesterday, in Lagos that the Federal Government’s decision to rate foreign-based athletes higher than their home-based counterparts, especially in terms of grants and allowances was counterproductive.
  

“That is why you don’t see many home-based athletes competing in Nigeria anymore. Everybody wants to travel abroad so that they can get equal treatment as foreign-based. It shouldn’t be so. But I commend the sports minister for even paying the home-based athletes’ grants in Paris. It was the first time,” he stated.
  
Although Ojeli did not disclose the disparity in what was paid to the foreign-based athletes and the home-based stars, an official who attended the Paris Olympics had earlier told The Guardian that one of the problems that Team Nigeria encountered at the Games was the payment of ‘training grants’ to the athletes in the middle of the Games.
 

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