In one year, retired Super Eagles midfielder Mikel John Obi has openly stated on multiple occasions that he paid $250,000 to fly Nigeria’s team from London to Rio for the 2016 Olympics, Soccernet.ng reports.
Nigeria won just one medal at the 2016 Olympics – the bronze by the football team. However, the team was very close to missing the entire tournament.
In one of the weirdest stories of that Olympics, Nigeria’s football team was camped in Atlanta, USA, for a few weeks.
But they could not leave in time due to difficulties in getting a flight. According to BBC, they were were having financial difficulties at the time.
They eventually got to camp just hours before their opening game of the competition against Japan, and they managed to eke out a 5-4 win.
Last year, former Super Eagles midfielder Mikel, who was captain of the team, finally opened up about the issue. He stated that he was the one who paid for the team’s flight from Atlanta to Rio, Brazil.
Then, in a recent podcast with former Liverpool man Peter Crouch last week, Mikel, reiterated his earlier statement.
“There was no money to pay for a flight, the players were worried… I spoke to the coach, we looked for a plane and I had to pay for it,” Mikel said.
“There was no money to pay for a flight, the players were worried… I spoke to the coach, we looked for a plane and I had to pay for it.”
Mikel Obi said he still hasn’t been reimbursed for flying the Nigerian football team to the Rio 2016 Olympics. pic.twitter.com/OmVAvJosHQ
— @ (@OneJoblessBoy) June 18, 2025
However, Bunmi Jinadu, the organiser of of the pre-Olympic camp in Atlanta in 2016, has come out to debunk Mikel’s claims.
In the interview he had with Elegbete TV, it was confirmed that there were actually issue with funding at the time.
However, Jinadu maintained that the flight which took the Nigerian football team to Rio was fully sponsored by Delta Airlines.
“I signed an agreement with the NFF to be the one to host the team for their training for two weeks,” Jinadu told Elegbete TV.
“They came into the US, there was some exhibition games that we organized. Unfortunately, one of the main ones that we organized rained out.
“The Nigerian Olumpic team was the first team to play Atlanta United. That day it rained out, everyone returned their tickets, so I was in the red.
“I was going to use some of the money and the silverback we were going to get for anything the team wanted.
“When my contract with them was over, we just thought that we had done what we were contracted to do. So they could continue their Olympic preparations.
“Getting closer to the time they were going to Rio, they now realized that they were not having any luck to get a plane for everybody.
“But then, I thought if I didn’t do anything about the situation, the whole nation would be blaming me. That’s was when I started hustling.
“The media called the airport in Atlanta to interview somebody. I already made some calls to some Nigerian billionaires at that time who had private jets. But they said they had no issues with the national team.
“When the press finally called, it was a live interview. At the time, the only thing I had was God and faith.
“They said the team had financial problems, but I told them the issue was the difficulty in getting a plane due to the congested flight schedule because everyone was going to Rio. If the team was in Nigeria, the NFF just had to make a call. But it was different in America.
“I appealed to Delta to help our cause at the time. As soon as I got off that interview, I got a phone call from the leadership of Delta to tell me they heard the interview and they were working on it.
“They called me 30 minutes later to tell me they had found a plane to take the team to Europe. Ordinarily, the plane would cost $250k but they gave it to me for free. They also promised to give me the team hotel reservations for the night.
“That was how the team got to Rio and jumped on the pitch the same day.”
Jinadu and Mikel have the opposite narrations of what happens. Perhaps soon, what really happened with the Olympic team will be made know.