The Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) has established June 14 as the date for fresh elections into its board despite the federation’s leadership crisis that has refused to end.
It’ll be remembered that since 2018 the sports federation has been embroiled in a leadership tussle between Engineer Ibrahim Gusau and Hon. Olamide George.
However, the international sports governing body, World Athletics (WA) in zoom assembly with the two factions, along with several officials in the Sports Ministry on Wednesday concluded that elections to the board of the AFN will hold on June 14, 2021, in a venue to be decided by the Congress which would be the apex body.
According to a source in the Olamide George camp, the Confederation of Athletics Federation (CAA) and World Athletics (WA) embraced the 2017 constitution as the working document for the governance of their federation.
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The source further said that Engr Gusau and Adeleye had refused to sign the resolutions while staying adamant to see the end of the case in court.
On the other hand, the technical manager, Sunday Adeleye who had been at the meeting told that the 2017 constitution wasn’t adopted as promised by another faction.
According to him, the AFN is functioning with the amended constitution of 2019 which further down the powers of the president instead of this 2017 constitution.
“They desired to make use of this 2017 constitution for the sake of peace but we said no because the matter is in court. Are we going to infringe on the court orders?
“Yes, we all refused to sign the resolutions. We needed to speak to the board members along with our legal team at first before taking actions.
“We will stick to the court cases into their logical conclusion. Can somebody bring out files and state we should sign? World Athletics will never bend rules, why should we bend rules? Just because we want peace, we’ll reside under illegality?
It’s in the midst of these unresolved and controversial issues that the sports federation has fixed June 14 for elections
