The minister disclosed this on his X handle on Thursday while reacting to the post by the cycler, who claimed that the German team offered her a bicycle to participate in the competition.
He wrote, “My attention has been called to a post on social media by Ese Ukpeseraye. After reading the post and some follow-up comments, I swung into action. Ese’s post seems to have been grossly misunderstood, perhaps also because it didn’t seem to give proper context to the matter in perspective. It is important I make some clarifications.
“Abinitio, Team Nigeria qualified for one road race in cycling and prepared for it in terms of training and the appropriate competition equipment. Team Nigeria was fully prepared for this road race until two weeks ago, after the Cycling team with the rest of Team Nigeria had already left for the Olympics, when a communication from the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) was received reallocating additional slots to the Cyclist Federation of Nigeria (Kerin and individual sprint).
“This reallocation to Nigeria was due to the disqualification of a country, leaving Nigeria as the next eligible to make the list of qualified countries to compete. Unfortunately, this additional slot required the use of different competition equipment in terms of biking.”
The sports minister maintained that the Team Nigeria federation, through Ese’s club in Europe and a German-owned company, got a track bike for her to participate.
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