Nigerian athlete, Brown Ebewele is dead

A former Nigerian athlete and administrator, Brown Ebewele is dead.

Ebewele fondly called ‘Juju Man’ died on Friday afternoon at a private hospital in Warri, Delta State after a surgery.

The no-nonsense former athlete rose to become the Director of Sport and later Commissioner of Sports in Edo State.

The success of Team Nigeria at the 2003 African Games hosted by Nigeria in Abuja was partly due to the efforts of Ebewele.

He introduced decathlon into Nigerian sports and dominated it until he retired as an athlete.

He was always in the forefront in the battle for athletes to get their due rights from administrators who are fond of shortchanging them.

The most prominent of them was his spat with Jim Nwobodo as Minister of Sports.

At various times, he led such states as Delta, Kano, Borno and Edo to decent outings at the National Sports Festival.

His last outing was helping Team Edo to finish as runners up at the much postponed NSF which held last April in Benin City.