Three Nigerian athletes in the drug web?

Solomon Ogba...not a laughing matter

*Nigeria loses win of African championship

Nigeria’s feeble ambition to win medals in athletics at the Olympics may have suffered a serious whiff of set back with three of her athletes caught in the web of drug again. This is authoritative, reliable and extremely true as usual.

The three athletes (who the AFN and its top echelon of officials are not willing to speak to this reporter) are known but due to official quietude or either a denial or confirmation will not be mentioned for now.

It is certain that the well-known “coach” who has been linked to majority of drug web issues in the Nigerian athletics fold who is presently one of the official assistants to national team coach, Innocent Egbunike is likely to have introduced one of the alleged athletes to taking the drug for which she has now been nabbed.

The athlete in question is the daughter of a former Nigerian international athlete. She was born and bred in the United State of America. This is her first time in the Nigerian team. It is coincidental that she was caught in the drug scam on her maiden Nigerian outing.

In view of the foregoing, Nigeria has lost automatically the self-praised winning of the last African Athletics championships in Port-Novo in Benin Republic as two of the team medals will have to be withdrawn by the Confederation of African Athletics. The two medals to be lost are the 4x100m and the 4x400m.

Another of the alleged drug culprit is by the new revelation a second timer. All three suspects (as they await the B sample of the test) are female. Sadly, the three who have in their rights the B standard would not be replaceable in the Nigerian Olympic squad since we did not register reserves. This puts our relay squad in a deep mess.  

…As Nigeria drops drug-tainted coach of Marion Jones

It is now official that Nigeria apart from its quality of drug-courier ‘coach’ in its national athletics camp has also employed and eventually dropped the drug-tainted American coach, Garfield Ellenwood, as one of the coaches to the London Games.

On the 2^nd July, the AFN president Solomon Ogba listed Ellenwood as one of the experts that could help improve Nigerian athletes in London when he released the official team list of the federation for the Games to the media at the secretariat of the Nigeria Olympic Committee.

Ellenwood, the former Bethune-Cookman head track and field coach was given a two-year suspension by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) that was announced on 28^th January, 2010.

One of the several publications on the matter in 2008 and 2010 traced his problems to the drug ring involving former disgraced American athlete, Marion Jones.

It read, “The suspension stems from Ellenwood’s testimony in May 2008 at the perjury trial of track coach Trevor Graham relating to the federal BALCO probe. Ellenwood testified Graham introduced him to a steroids dealer and he used steroids for a short period as a track athlete.

“That was 12 years ago,” Ellenwood said of the matter. “We live and learn. (Graham) was my track coach for six months in North Carolina. Since then I’ve dedicated myself to make sure kids don’t make the same mistakes I made.”

Ellenwood, who coached former B-CU hurdler Ronnie Ash to two national championships, was fired by the school Sept. 8, 2009, for “violations of university policy as well as Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference and NCAA rules,” according to a statement released by the athletics department to announce the firing of Ellenwood and assistant coach Kia Davis.

Despite these celebrated cases, Ellenwood, was quoted by an AFN source as saying that the USADA suspension would not keep him away from the job of coaching elite athletes or making a return to college coaching. The AFN source added that Ellenwood’s suspension was over and had been cleared to coach again.

He said, “We are very much aware of comments that have been made about Ellenwood by some people, but I can explain away that the AFN president or the federation itself would directly go ahead to hire a coach without due clearance. He is the personal coach of Glory Asunmu and all that he was suspended for happened years back. He served it out by the beginning of 2012 and has been cleared by the USADA to coach again.”