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A
fresh election to bring in new executives into the Nigeria Olympic
Committee is to be conducted at the Olympic secretariat situated in the
National Stadium in Lagos today.

The election is
coming on the heels of last Thursday’s election, which was annulled by
the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which ruled that recognised
executive members of the current board who ought to have conducted the
elections were absent.

Tony Nezianya, Public Relations’ Officer of the NOC, say’s anyone who thinks the elections will not hold is mistaken.

“Of course the
election is going to take place, only a national disaster can stop it
and we are not praying for such to happen in our country,” he said.

“Everything is in
order and the IOC has sent in their representative to make sure he
conducts a credible election that would have a legal backing and
recognised winners.”

Mustafa Berraf, the
Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa (ANOCA)
Vice-President, is the IOC representative who will be supervising
today’s election.

Nezianya pointed
out that any contestant or interested party that decides to boycott
today’s election will be doing that at their own peril.

“The IOC man is
here already and he has been saddled with the responsibility conducting
a free and fair election. It would be unfortunate for anyone to boycott
today’s election,” he said.

Disturbing trend

The current
imbroglio at the NOC is a continuation of a disturbing trend associated
with elections into different boards of sporting bodies in Nigeria.

The most recent was
the Nigeria Football Federation election, which was only annulled some
weeks back after series of bickering among the contestants, accusations
and counter accusations of among them.

In the elections
today, former sports minister Sani Ndanusa who was elected in last
week’s anulled elections will attempt to wrest reins of leadership from
Habu Gumel, who has been at the top of the NOC for nine years.

In last Thursday’s
annulled elections, Ndanusa was voted for by all the 23 accredited
delegates in attendance to beat incumbent Gumel who was absent. Other
members elected were Jonathan Nnaji, who was returned as the 1st Vice
President, while Solomon Ogba was returned unopposed as the 2nd Vice
President and Tijani Umar as the 3rd Vice president.

Tunde Popoola
emerged as the Secretary General amassing 21 votes to defeat the
incumbent Banji Oladapo who was equally absent but had two votes while
John Hamakim defeated Uche Nebedum by the same margin in the contest
for Deputy Secretary-General position.

Bappa Aliyu and Tony Ubani completed the list of those elected last
week; however the contestants will today put their popularity to test
again today.