Nigeria: As Falilat Marries Again... My Mother Survived Polygamy, So Can I

6 October 2007
interview

Lagos — She still has that athletic body that won her many crowns as the jewel of the tracks in the world of athletics many years back.

Fully kitted in her sports attire, her fragile and slender look depicts a lady just rounding up her secondary school as she moves around inside the main bowl of Teslim Balogun Stadium, Surulere, Lagos where her newly formed non governmental Organisation tagged " Falilat Ogunkoya Sports Foundation holds a clinic programme for game masters and mistresses in Lagos State. Born in December 5, 1968 in Ode-Lemo in Ogun State. Falilat Ogunkoya formerly Osheku now Omotayo first cut her teeth as an athletic sprinter in 1980 when she was barely 12 years. She emerged the best runner in All Secondary School Competition held in Sagamu in that year. In 1985, she repeated the same feat at the National Sports Festival in Ilorin Kwara State, where she won four gold medals. In 1986, she became the World Junior Champion in Athens, Greece. And ever since, she has been winning medals across the globe. Her days of glory came in 1996 when she put up a superlative performance at Atlanta Olympics in the United States. She won Silver, bronze and gold medals that placed her on the top ladder in the black race. Her 49.10 seconds African record remains unbroken till today. Though a successful woman by all ramifications, but tongues began to wag when her marriage to her former coach/husband, Osheku whom many believe was the platform she rode to stardom, packed up. What could have gone wrong? The queen of the track replied, "Whether you are Hausa, Ibo or Yoruba, you must treat everybody equally. And when you are in a place where you are not being appreciated, it is very difficult. He was my husband but he still got paid whenever he stepped on the track with me,"

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