President of the West African University Games, Prof Lasun Emiola, on Wednesday in Ilorin allayed fears of participants over use of mercenaries at the 13th WAUG events.

The Games started on Tuesday at the University of Ilorin and Emiola told the News Agency of Nigeria that it would be easy for officials to keep out mercenary athletes from the Games.

"In spite of the cross-border aspect of the events, keeping out the mercenaries is not as difficult as it looks. Rather, things have been made easier for us by certain things," Emiola said.

The former Director of the National Institute for Sports in Lagos said that online accreditation had helped in curbing the use of mercenaries at the games.

"The introduction of online registration in many universities means that we can go to the concerned university’s website to cross-check the information presented to us by an athlete," he said.

Emiola, the 13th WAUG Director-General, however, acknowledged that cross-checking the information provided by participating Francophone countries’ universities presented a challenge.

He said, "It does appear that most of them have not caught up with the online registration and that means we have to do their registration manually."