{"id":41979,"date":"2024-07-15T18:00:12","date_gmt":"2024-07-15T18:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/biafra-simon-ekpa-announces-return-of-athletic-medals-to-nigerian-govt\/"},"modified":"2024-07-15T18:00:12","modified_gmt":"2024-07-15T18:00:12","slug":"biafra-simon-ekpa-announces-return-of-athletic-medals-to-nigerian-govt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/biafra-simon-ekpa-announces-return-of-athletic-medals-to-nigerian-govt\/","title":{"rendered":"Biafra: Simon Ekpa announces return of athletic medals to Nigerian Govt"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Biafra activist, Simon Ekpa, on Monday said he has returned all the medals he won for Nigeria back to the Federal Government.<\/p>\n<p>This comes amid his calls for Biafra independence.<\/p>\n<p>Ekpa disclosed this in a statement posted on his official X handle.<\/p>\n<p>DAILY POST recalls that Ekpa, who is known as the Prime Minister of Biafra Republic Government In-Exile, won some medals in the past as an athlete for Nigeria.<\/p>\n<p>However, Finland-based Ekpa said the medals were sent back to the Nigerian government through a logistics company from Finland on Friday last week and were delivered to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Abuja, Nigeria, today, Monday, 15th July.<\/p>\n<p>He said the move was to further denounce Nigeria.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have successfully returned the medals I won for Nigeria during my athletic days.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe medals were delivered today (Monday) to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Tuggar.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith this development, every tie between me and Nigeria both in sports, spiritually and physically is hereby cut off completely.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe medals are as follows: 2003 African Junior SILVER MEDAL; ExxonMobile track and field GOLD MEDAL; ExxonMobile track and field SILVER MEDAL; Other medals have nothing to do with Nigeria, so I retain them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Ekpa had earlier renounced his Nigerian citizenship in 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Biafra: Simon Ekpa announces return of athletic medals to Nigerian Govt<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Biafra activist, Simon Ekpa, on Monday said he has returned all the medals he won for Nigeria back to the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41980,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6921,15,901,4873],"tags":[436,11521,13,4875,512,21013,180,18,766,2855,4874],"class_list":["post-41979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biafra","category-news","category-nigeria","category-simon-ekpa","tag-announces","tag-athletic","tag-biafra","tag-ekpa","tag-govt","tag-medals","tag-news","tag-nigeria","tag-nigerian","tag-return","tag-simon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}