Nigeria's men 4x400m team have been left out of the final list of 16 teams for the 1600 relay event of the London Olympics

The Athletic Federation of Nigeria (AFN) has withdrawn Team Nigeria’s men’s 4x400m squad from this year’s Olympiad in London.

President of the AFN, Chief Solomon Ogba said Tuesday in a statement that the withdrawal followed the none qualification of Nigeria for the event.

“When we listed our team for the Games on Monday afternoon, we were hoping that our men’s 4x400m relay squad will be among the final 16 countries. But following the list released yesterday by the IAAF, we are therefore withdrawing the 4x400m from our original team to the London Games,” observed the statement from the AFN president.

At the briefing on Monday at Sports City, AFN listed Saul Weigopwa, Abiola Onakoya, Isah Saliu, Tobi Ogunmola, Segun Ogunkole and Godday James as members of the 4x400m team to the Games.

The relay quartet of Isah Saliu, Abiola Onakoya, Amaechi Morton and Saul Weigopwa ran the race of their lives on the final day of the African Championships in Port Novo to claim the men’s 4x400m gold. Nigerian captain, Weigopwa out ran Botswana’s last leg on the curve of the home stretch to hit the finish line in 3.02: 39 secs. Botswana got disqualified for South Africa (3.04.12secs) to profit while the bronze went to Kenya (3.04.21).

“We were hoping that the 3.02 was good enough to see Nigeria in the last 16 position. We knew that IAAF uses the aggregate margin of each countries two best times to correlate those to make the final cut of 16 team but it is quite unfortunate that we could not pull through,” stressed Chief Ogba who remains positive of Team Nigeria’s good outing at the London Games.

The qualification period for the men’s and women’s 4x100m and 4x400m Relays at the Games of the XXX Olympiad, London 2012 ended on Monday July 2. The aggregate of the two fastest times achieved by national teams in the qualification period of 1 January1,  2011 to  July 2, 2012 (for the results to be valid for qualification purposes, a minimum of three international teams had to have competed in each race) were used to select the qualifiers.
All the qualified teams:
Men 4x100m
1          JAM
2          USA
3          FRA
4          GBR
5          TRI
6          BRA
7          GER
8          POL
9          SKN
10        HKG
11        CAN
12        ITA
13        JPN
14        CHN
15        AUS
16        NED

Men 4x400m
1          USA
2          RSA
3          JAM
4          CUB
5          RUS
6          BEL
7          GBR
8          BAH
9          GER
10        TRI
11        KEN
12        VEN
13        AUS
14        DOM
15        JPN
16        POL

Women 4x100m

1          USA
2          JAM
3          UKR
4          FRA
5          GER