ALL is not well in the Team Nigeria camp following allegations that the Nigeria Olympics Committee (NOC) has denied some members of the contingent tickets to enter venues of the games.This comes on the heels of the rumour that tickets allocated to Nigerian officials were among those being sold in the black market in London.Pleading anonymity, an official of one of the federations alleged that the NOC has been hoarding the tickets meant for the Nigerian delegation, and that even members of the team have found it difficult getting pass to the events' venues.The situation, the official said, has become so disturbing to the extent that the ''Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) President, Solomon Ogba, who is also the second vice president of the NOC, was forced to buy tickets to watch the opening ceremony and two other days of action at the Olympic Park.''The usual practice in difficult situations is to invite parents or partners of the athletes to come and cheerthem up during competitions; that was how Mo Farah's wife came into the stadium during the 10,000 metres to cheer her husband to victory.'All around the venues you will see relations of athletes among the officials supporting their own, but that is not the case with Team Nigeria because there is no ticket for such people to be part of the event.''A pathetic case was witnessed during the Saturday events when Gloria Asunmu's mother and Regina George's relation, who flew in from America, could not find a ticket to enter the Olympic Park to watch the 100 metres and 400 meteres events respectively. The excuse by the NOC was that there were no tickets available to give to them.''Also not happy with the handling of the tickets are some NOC officials, who feel that ticket distribution should be done in such a way that all eligible Nigerians would have access to it.AFN Secretary, Maria Wophil, and her taekwondo federation counterpart told The Guardian yesterday that they have not been able to find tickets for their relations who came to watch the Olympics from different parts of the world.Rather than blame the NOC for its inability to secure the tickets, however, the duo said the local organising committee should be held responsible because it commercialised everything at the Games.According to Worphil, ''the organisers have made things very difficult for everybody because they want to make money from everything here. We are supposed to get tickets for contingencies but we don't even have the number officially stipulated for us. It is not good because they are deviating from he normal procedure.''There were unconfirmed reports that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was investigated Nigeria, Italy and Syria over the sale of the countries' official delegates' tickets in the black market.The report had it that the tickets marked serially for the three countries were among the ones found in the black market by investigators, who posed as fans looking for entry permits into the Olympic Park.However, officials of the marketing outfit handling Nigerian tickets, WAKANOW, have denied their company's involvement in the alleged scam. An official of the company, Okechukwu Eneanya, said the company sold the tickets in its possession to Nigerians, whose identities could be verified by anybody interested in the distribution procedure.Also, Team Nigeria has described as 'baseless' reports linking it to black market tickets at the London 2012 Olympics. Unconfirmed reports spread like wild fire yesterday mentioning a number of countries as having their delegations' tickets in the hands of black market operators in London.And acting promptly, Chef de Mission of Team Nigeria, Dr. Patrick Ekeji, called the Local Organising Committee members, who weredumbfounded about the rumours, stating: 'We do not know anything about that and we don't act on rumours.'Neither the NSC nor the NOC has anything to do with tickets, as those were exclusive to approved ticket re-sellers, with WAKANOW having the rights for Nigeria.
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