•Tinubu and Shettima with Super Eagles
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has been commended for hosting the silver-winning Super Eagles and best male football team of the concluded 34th African Cup of nations (AFCON), with the Human rights Writers Association of Nigeria declaring the presidential reception as wise and worthy.
The Super Eagles played second fiddle to host Cote D’ Ivoire in the final game but returned the tournament’s overall best team, reports Daily Independent.
Hailing the conferment of National honours on the players and the donation of flats of housing assets and plots of Juicy Abuja land to the team, HURIWA said the gift is a great way of rewarding excellence.
The human rights group however cautioned against toeing the part of past governments who made promises that were observed in the breach.
“We hope those are not audio or deceptive gifts. We hope the minister of Federal Capital Territory (FCT) has already issued them with the actual ‘C of O’ as the president was making the presidential pronouncement.
“We hope that these are not the ‘yahoo yahoo’ kind of gifts that the previous Administrations made to national players that did not come through until some of them passed on without receiving them,” stressed HURIWA.
While commending the gesture of the government, HURIWA however rebuked the administration for the pantry allocation to sports.
“This government of Bola Ahmed Tinubu has not shown good faith and commitment to the promotion and funding of the sports sector.
“The only excellent decision in the area of sport, is the appointment of a bright and broad-minded Nigerian politician as the minister of sports, Senator John Owan Enoh, and we ask why Mr President and his government allocated just a mere N31.24 billion Naira for entire sports whereas, the National Assembly that comprise of less than 500 member and far less than two thousand members of staff are smiling with a whopping sum of N344.85 billion Naira.”
Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, National Coordinator of the group in a statement wondered how the nation was expecting the Super Eagles to win were it not for the training they received from their clubs.
HURIWA also condemned ongoing cyber bullying of Alex Iwobi and urged the DSS, and police to step and arrest the culprits.
