New Telegraph

PUMA Kits: Nigeria will not succumb to blackmail –Minister

The Minister of Youths and Sports, Mr. Sunday Dare, has said the ministry and the Nigeria Olympic Committee (NOC) will not succumb to and form of blackmail. In his response to an article titled: ‘Presidency Should Call Mr. Sunday Akin Dare to Order Before He Embarrasses Nigeria’, by one Sylvanus Ofekun’, which went viral online, Dare said the Nigeria Olympic team will not be forced wear PUMA Kits it knows nothing about. He said: “The Attention of the Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Mr. Sunday Dare, has been drawn to a publication titled “Presidency Should Call Mr. Sunday Akin Dare to Order Before He Embarrasses Nigeria, By Sylvanus Ofekun”, which was published by Sahara Reporters and reproduced by a few other platforms that did not conduct the professionally expected due diligence on the false claims made in the said piece.

“It is common knowledge that the former Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) president, Engineer Ibrahim Shehu Gusau with his co-travellers is desperate to extricate himself from a contract that he controversially signed the AFN into, which has now placed him in a position of trying to blackmail Team Nigeria into wearing the kits.

“Ibrahim Gusau has conveniently neglected to tell Nigerians that he and Sunday Adeleye signed a non-disclosure agreement with PUMA, which details are unknown the the Ministry and board members of the AFN. “The Minister and the Ministry will not commit the Nigerian government and Nigerian athletes to a deal of which the Ministry has not sighted the contractual documents that ties Nigerian athletes to a five year contract with PUMA.” The minister said Gusau did not write any official letter to the NOC about the kits neither did he contact the incumbent AFN Secretary General to take them over just as he did not remit them to the known address of the AFN, which is AFN Secretariat at the Moshood Abiola National Stadium, Abuja. He, however, said Gusau ran the PUMA deal as a purely personal enterprise, which landed him in trouble with the law.

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