The Dream Team appears to be on the road to causing Nigeria a major embarrassment at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
This followed the eyebrow raised by the organisers of the Games over claims by members of the Dream Team that they have lost their accreditation cards twice.
In this regard, a three-man panel has been despatched by the Federal Government to Salvador, Brazil to investigate allegations of abuse of Personal Identification Cards, known as PVCs or accreditation cards, in Nigeria’s Dream Team VI.
This followed a mail dated August 12 and signed by Lenny Abbey, head of the NOC Relations and Services, on the issue.
The mail reads: “It has come our attention that there has been abuse of accreditation by the Nigerian Football team. Rio 2016 Accreditation Department reported that upon arrival in Manaus on the 4th of August 2016, the team claimed that they all lost their PVCs and requested accreditation management to re-issue the cards. On the 8th of August, members of the team came to Sao Paolo and claimed they had lost their cards in Brasilia and requested a re-print. The security department has also informed that they had found PVCs that have been laminated with a plain laminator and have been used to access football hotels and venues where there is no electronic access control.Using cancelled accreditation or counterfeiting accreditation by laminating PVCs to grant access to unaccredited support staff, family and friends is unacceptable and goes against the Rio 2016 and IOC policies and rules.
“We count on the support of the Nigeria Olympic Committee to rectify this issue immediately and respect the accreditation quota allocated to the NOC as per IOC accreditation guidelines.The IOC has been notified. Please note that measures shall be taken should this issue continue.”
The Minister of Youth and Sports, Solomon Dalung, has in this regard despatched Nigeria’s Chief de mission, Chinyeaka Ohaa; his deputy, Engr. Emeka Onyeama; and Secretary-General of the NOC, Tunde Popoola, to identify the 25 officially accredited players and officials to avoid an international embarrassment by the Security Department of the organizing Committee of the games.
Dalung said: “I have asked the three men to verify the players with official accreditation and remove the rest from the hotel and camp so that we can report back to the IOC that we have complied. Our football federation came with excess players and officials but we have taken steps to rectify it. We don’t want any of our players to be found in possession of the counterfeit PVCs.”
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