SENIOR FIGURES at the Commonwealth Games and from the team behind Glasgow’s winning bid have reacted with incredulity to claims from a Nigerian official that the voting to decide the venue for the 2014 games was subject to ballot-rigging and manipulation.
Glasgow’s �288 million plan won by 47 votes to 24 against the Nigerian capital, Abuja, when the ballot was staged in Colombo, Sri Lanka, earlier this month. Abuja’s failure to become the first African city to stage the “Friendly Games” has been followed by recriminations, with the losers blaming racism and “British imperialism” for Scotland’s success.
But last night Mike Hooper, the chief executive of the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF), rejected allegations of ballot-rigging, calling them “absolutely ludicrous”. Privately, CGF sources expressed their exasperation, since Glasgow had won the ballot by such a convincing margin.
Although Nigeria is one of the world’s most oil-rich nations, Abuja remains unable to guarantee mains electricity supplies for more than four hours a day. The Nigerian bid was heavily criticised by the assessment panel, and ultimately struggled to win many votes from outside Africa’s 18-nation voting bloc.
But these factors have been overlooked by some close to the Abuja bid. Nigeria’s vice-president, Goodluck Jonathan, who attended the final presentations in Colombo, said: “The Commonwealth Games Federation is not kind to Africa. They were unfair to the Nigerian and African bid. There was no reason to lose.”
In an article published last week on an international sports website, the Abuja bid’s head of media, Mitchell Obi, suggested that voting irregularities may have influenced the outcome, saying that there was an “apparent lack of transparency that marked the voting and announcement of the bid”.
He went on: “Many have questioned the hurried, panicky decision of the leadership of the federation to destroy the votes immediately the result was announced. Some have even ridiculed the counting of the votes in a separate room far from the assembly hall where the voting took place, adding a tinge of suspicion of a vote count without observers of the two bidding cities.”
These claims were firmly rejected by the CGF. “Everything was conducted very openly, all on camera,” Hooper, a New Zealander, told the Sunday Herald. “Obi is entitled to his point of view, but that’s the way we have always conducted our votes, and we have no plans to change.”
Hooper pointed out that he was one of three independent scrutineers, the others being Prince Tunku Imran of Malaysia, and Austin Sealy, a high commissioner from Barbados. He also said that the claim that the voting forms were “hurriedly” destroyed was entirely wrong. “In fact, I had them in my case for several days after the vote,”he said.
But keeping the Commonwealth “family of nations” together is a tough diplomatic task. Moses Tanui of Kenya, the former world half-marathon champion, said the vote for Glasgow was tainted by racism. “It is obvious the white members of the Commonwealth do not like Africans,” he said. Nigeria’s sports minister, Abdulrahman Gimba, has attacked the decision as “predetermined”.
The reactions have saddened Glasgow’s bid team. Rob Shorthouse, spokesman for Glasgow 2014, described the complaints as “very disappointing”.
“To suggest that there was anything wrong with the way the vote was conducted is well wide of the mark,” he said.
Source: Sunday Herald