A number of athletes and other Nigerians who wished to be at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in July have been swindled by Athletics Federation of Nigeria and Sports Ministry officials.
Investigations revealed that the concerned individuals paid various sums of money totaling N3.2m at the different times into the the private GT account 02372578… of one Mr. Aniette who is a staff of the Sports Ministry and works with the Athletics Federation of Nigeria in April 2022. This was with the hope that they would be granted visas to attend the Commonwealth Games.
“We were told that Mr. Aniette was helping people getting visa and so I approached him and he asked me to pay processing fees which I and the others paid,” said one of the victims of the scam.
“But a few weeks to the Commonwealth Games I and the others did not get any info from Mr. Aniette and people started traveling for the Games, it dawn on us that we weren’t going to get any visas that we paid for.
“One of us finally got through to him on the phone and he told us that the money we paid was none refundable and we asked him how can it be none refundable when we did not get any interview date?
“We went to the AFN secretariat to lay complain, but they did not give us any answer and since reporting the matter to the AFN, Mr. Aniette has refused to pick our call neither have we seen him personally.”
Efforts to reach Mr. Aniette to state his own side of the story proved abortive. Several calls made to his mobile phone were unanswered, neither did he respond to Facebook message that was sent to him.
It was gathered that this visa racket has been going on for years in the sports ministry and the recent case was not the only time Nigerians have fallen victims to the visa scam.
“We are beginning to suspect that Mr. Aniette has the backing of his superiors.
“Otherwise he would have returned our calls and be saying something about refunding the money that was transferred to him.
“We call on the sports minister to investigate this matter and compel whoever is involved to return our hard earned money,” the athlete added.
Birmingham Story: Nigerian athletes at the 2022 CWG.