NSC Short Change Paralympians.

Yakubu Adesokan

Crisis looms between the country’s athletes to the recently concluded London 2012 Paralympic games and the officials of the National Sports Commission (NOC) over the federal government largesse as the athletes are set to petition presidency.


The President, Jonathan Ebele Goodluck had announced monetary awards to the athletes and their officials for making the country proud at the games during the ceremony in their honour penultimate weekend.

Goodluck had announced 5million naira for gold medalists, 3million naira for silver, 2.5 for bronze medalists, 500,000 naira for all athletes that did not win any medal and 2.5million naira each for all the accompanied officials, coaches, secretaries, medical teams and the loaders. But to the surprised of the athletes they have been short changed by the NSC officials with only medalists being paid fully.

 It was revealed to Sportswriters by some of the officials that they only received 1million naira when the alert came. A member of the medical team told sportswriters that he got an alert for 1million naira while the coaches also confirmed the same thing when asked.

The 3 loaders according to investigation were paid 500,000 naira as against 2.5million announced by the president. The affected officials pleaded not to be mentioned so as not to be dealt with but have all resolved to petition the presidency over this ugly trend wondering why the president should asked them to be paid some amount and they were paid another.

Meanwhile, some of the federation secretaries kept sealed lips over this development when contacted but the other officials even showed the alert to sportswriters.

“We have resolved to petition the Presidency over this development because this really took us by surprise, when the statement made at the ceremony and only for us to get alert (Wednesday and Tuesday) for another payment, we only need to know why or maybe the president has changed his mind without telling us”, the officials said while chatting with sportswriters Thursday.