Team Nigeria made the headlines at the Paris 2024 Olympics. But it was for the wrong reasons. Officials of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) had committed what qualifies as sacrilege after omitting one of the country’s best medal hopefuls, Favour Ofili, from the 100m race, even though she had qualified to compete.
An aghast Ofili, who prior to the Olympics had a running battle with the AFN, swiftly took to social media to express her grievances against the officials. She in fact said unprintable words to let out the frustration of being deprived of an opportunity to make a name for self and country. At that time, the AFN had justified Ofili’s exclusion from the list of racers although the justification was bereft of logic as the athletics body fell just short of saying the angry athlete was not physically fit to compete, an assertion that would have been impossible to prove. The frustration impacted on her so much that although she eventually participated in the women’s 200m, she came a distant sixth in the final.
It would have been better if Nigeria went ahead to haul athletics medals at the Paris Games. But the country still failed to make the podium and returned home empty-handed.
The Paris Games’ wound was yet to fully heal when a news bombshell landed on June 21 that Ofili had perfected deals with Turkey with a view to dumping Nigeria to henceforth compete for the European nation.
The news jolted many Nigerians. But it jolted the AFN more, especially as the federation could not absolve itself from the frustration that led Ofili to take the decision that has every inch career-saving from whatever angle it was viewed.
An embarrassed Tonobok Okowa, AFN’s President, could only mutter at first: “We won’t stop Favour Ofili from switching nationality because at 22 years of age, she is old enough to decide what is best for her.”
Reports on the same day indicated that Ofili had also dispatched a mandatory letter to the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) intimating the body for a change of nationality, the 150-meter world record holder citing the frustration she suffered from the AFN “in recent international competitions” as the factor that motivated her decision.
Feigning ignorance of the development, Okowa said he had learned of it “only in the media” as Ofili was yet to brief the federation either personally or through her representatives. He also feigned action, wondering why the athlete should not have exploited all available channels to express her grievances against the AFN: “The AFN and the National Sports Commission have been working hard to get athletics and other sports in the country back on track and to show that both bodies are matching goals, objectives and words with action. Ofili had already been paid her training grant for this year.”
The AFN president however admitted a rift between the athlete and the federation as a fallout of the Paris Olympics: “Ofili is very difficult to deal with. She has prevented the federation from reaching her since the Paris Olympics and all our attempts to reach a truce with her have proved futile.”
Perhaps, inadvertently, Okowa let out his grouse with the star athlete: “On several occasions she shunned the national trials, and even when she came, she selected the events she preferred to compete in.” But this hardly justified why she was barred from racing in the 100m event at the Olympics, despite not being injured.
Interestingly, Ofili’s predicament dated back to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics where she was among the ten Nigerian athletes who missed out of the Games due to AFN’s failure to meet mandatory anti-doping requirements.
With this switch of nationality, Ofili has now joined the list of her compatriots who opted out of Nigeria to save their career. In the 2000s, Gloria Alozie had switched to Spain, as well as Francis Obikwelu switching to Portugal and Femi Ogunode switching to Bahrain respectively. The trio justified their departures on the ill treatment they suffered from the AFN. Annette Echikunwoke, who switched to the United States after suffering frustration at Tokyo 2020, won silver in the women’s hammer throw at the Paris Olympics.
Checks on the World Athletics website on June 28 however showed that Ofili remains a Nigerian athlete, according to the global athletics body. TheTabloid.net gathered that Rule 4.4.2 of the World Athletics eligibility rules states that for an athlete to switch allegiance to a new country after previously representing another country at international competitions, he or she must observe a mandatory waiting period of three years from the time he or she last represented his or her previous country. From the foregoing, therefore, Ofili will be ready to compete for Turkey at the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.
Published on June 28, 2025
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