Tobi Adebayo
Grace Okagbare, an elder sister to Nigeria’s athlete, Blessing Okagbare has knocked officials of the Ministry of Sports over their silence on her sister’s alleged doping case.
In a statement titled ‘The many Lies of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria regarding Blessing Okagbare Tokyo 2020 Olympics Ordeal’, Grace said that Blessing was being forced by AFN to admit what she did not do.
She also accused a former Sports Minister of compounding her sister’s ordeal by saying untrue things.
The statement read in part “I am sincerely disappointed that since after the ordeals of Queen Blessing Okagbare, my kid sister and Africa’s Queen of the tracks during the Tokyo 2020 Olympics games, no official from the Ministry of Sports has reached out to her.
“Instead, what we are seeing in the media space is fabricated and unfounded lies to tarnish her image. This is sad and preposterous.
“A former sports Minister who is supposed to be a father figure to take up her case has rather failed woefully in all ramifications instead he’s going about running his mouth that he knew who gave drugs to Blessing.
“Blessing Okagbare believes that since she has been standing against the ills in the Sports Ministry, she is now a target. And they are hell-bent on tarnishing her image.
“They have fruitlessly tried to force her to own up and accept what she didn’t do and she won’t.
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“How can she cooperate or succumb to their whims and caprices when she hasn’t been to court for once since the incident happened?
“Up till date she hasn’t been called for the hearing of the case, but the idiots are spreading lies that she refused to cooperate with them, last month they came out with their usual propaganda that she has been banned.
“I believe there’s something they are either hiding or trying to cover up in this whole ordeal.
“For Okagbare to be ignored since after the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, goes to show that government officials and sports administrators, deliberately hell-bent on tarnishing her image and want her career to go down,” the statement reads in part.
