The athletes need not be blamed for the unfortunate outcomes but the sports administrators for their fabled incompetence.
Nigeria's participation in the Paris Olympics was appalling, as no medal was won. The athletes need not be blamed for the unfortunate outcomes but the sports administrators for their fabled incompetence. It is an utter national disgrace that should not be swept under the carpet, as the country is accustomed to.
This is the eighth such infamous record in the global competition, the last being the equally very poor showing at the London Olympics of 2012. The Olympics have become a platform which nations use to showcase their strength, culture, and youth development.
As the Olympics closed on 11 August, the Minister of Sports, John Enoh, rightly described the country's outing as a "disaster," and apologised to Nigerians. But the apology will not suffice. Sports-loving Nigerians, who painfully watched the shameful spectacle, stridently demand that heads must roll in the sports sector if things are ever to be got right. This call is well made. But others were not surprised as the lack of commitment to national duty, corruption, leadership tussles, mismanagement of funds and litigation often define our sports administration. These vices override the gravamen of nurturing athletes to excellence and having them bring honours to the country.
Preparations for the games were anything but primed for success. The Minister, Enoh, who was appointed in August 2023, admitted this much after the games: "I held extensive discussions with the management staff of the Ministry and got to know that preparations for the Olympics, which was less than a year away, had not started." Yet, he had still gone ahead to hypocritically charge the athletes to surpass "our best Olympics performance" in Atlanta 1996, when the Under 23 football team beat Argentina to win the gold medal. A similar diadem came from Chioma Ajunwa in the long jump.
It is not only Enoh that this woeful Olympics performance puts on the spot; unarguably much more are the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) president, Tonobok Okowa; his National Olympics Committee (NOC) counterpart, Habu Gumel; and the ministry's bureaucracy. These administrators don't deserve to remain in office.
The AFN has been a serial offender or forerunner of Nigeria's humiliations at the games. A female sprinter, Favour Offili, one of the medal hopefuls, was not registered for the 100 metres race after she had toiled for four years for the event. Instructively, she was also a victim of AFN's negligence in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics that saw 10 Nigerian athletes denied participation in their various events.
The Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) rule requires three out of the competition tests within 10 months, in the build-up to a major tournament, for which those athletes' non-compliance inevitably ruled them out. The AFN is in charge of ensuring that this doesn't happen but they bungled it then.
A Federation that was entangled in such a mess four years ago should have been more diligent this time. But it however doubled down. One of the 10 athletes affected by the AFN Tokyo blunder was Annette Echikunwoke, a female athlete based in the US. In Paris, she won a silver medal in the Hammer Throw for the US - the first of such medals for that country.
It was her Tokyo nightmare with Team Nigeria that necessitated a switch of allegiance to the US. "Being with the US, feeling cared for as an athlete, I really performed top of my game", she enthused after her victory. She wasn't the only athlete who draped the colours of other countries. Yemisi Ogunleye was another, with her gold medal in Shot Put for Germany.
Athletes should open up on why Nigeria totally failed, as Ese Ukpeseraye, a cyclist at the games has done. She revealed that sports administrators barred athletes from using the Abuja Velodrome for training before the games, having rented it to religious bodies and epicurean entrepreneurs. What a shame!
Changing this narrative should start with getting it right with the recruitment of those to head all the sports federations and members of their councils. Those who emerge must have the passion and skill-set to achieve results, rather than those who fight their way to these places to feather their nests.
The sports ministry is sui generis in nature, therefore its minister should have a sports pedigree. As such, President Bola Tinubu should stop using its ministerial appointment as a tool of political patronage. With the 2028 Olympics flag's transfer from Paris to Los Angeles already done, preparations for it have begun for serious-minded nations.
It is inconceivable that a country with over 200 million people, which prides itself on being the giant of Africa, could not make it to the Olympics podium that 84 countries shared. Out of this number were 10 African countries led by Kenya, which won four gold, two silver and five bronze medals. Others who won either the gold, silver or bronze were Algeria, South Africa, Ethiopia, Egypt, Tunisia, Botswana, Uganda, Morocco, Cote D'Ivoire and Zambia.
Nigeria participated in 12 sports events that it had hoped for wins in, such as football, basketball, weightlifting, boxing, long jump and shot put, among others. A total of N9 billion was reportedly sunk in the games. This was like throwing money at a competition we were ill-prepared for. The summary of our Paris 2024 outing is a brutal reflection of the many disjoints in our national life.
As a result, the ongoing conversation on Nigeria's dismal performance at the international sports event should deepen. There should be searchlights beamed on how sports federations function, given their critical role in nurturing and developing athletes, just as funding and management challenges deserve special focus.
Minister Enoh had earlier accused some federations of prioritising the qualification of athletes for the games over preparing them well to win medals; and even when wrong selections were made, they remained adamant in attending to complaints. Ultimately, this bodes ill for the games, as the outcomes reveal.
Nigeria's only brief spark in the Olympics was the female basketball team, D'Tigress, which reached the quarter-finals - the first time that an African national team would do so. It had beaten the World's number three in the game, Australia, and the number five, Canada, before its defeat by the US. Another sobering moment was the disqualification of our men's 4x400 metres relay team, for violating the line rule, after it came second in the semi-final, to book a ticket for the finals.
Our best medal hope and World Record Holder in the 100 metres hurdle, Tobi Amusan, crashed out in the semi-final stage. Equally, Ese Brume, another medal hopeful in long jump, along with Ruth Usoro and Prestina Ochonogor, all failed to prove their mettle.
Unfortunately, we wager that some of these athletes might be at the nadir of their careers, if not having already quit the stage, by the next Olympics. This raises the concern about their successors. The National Sports Festival, which used to be a breeding ground for athletes, is a shadow of its former self. After its break in 2012, following the lack of sponsorship by the 36 states, it was revived in 2018.
Annual school sports competitions have atrophied too. For evidence, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, offered one such example: in March, he announced the restoration of the FCT schools' sports competition, after a 25-year break. Sports in tertiary institutions and the Nigerian University Games Association (NUGA) of the 1970s, which produced the likes of Adokie Amaesiemeka, an iconic winger in the Green Eagles of yore (as the national football team was called decades ago), have become silhouettes of the past.
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The policy implication of this is that it's not sufficient to rely on recruiting from inter-school sports, even if it is satisfactorily resuscitated. In a lot of sports, seeking out 15-year-olds from secondary schools is already a losing strategy. Specialised primary schools with good equipment and coaches have been the way to go so as to catch them young. The countries that follow this strategy then ensure that their best is oriented towards further specialised secondary schools and universities. Long-term planning and appropriate investments are the only routes to go about this.
In the United States, four universities in California won 89 medals out of the 126 that the US hauled in the just concluded Olympics, of which 40 were gold. In Nigeria, universities, perennially closed as a result of ASUU strikes, struggle to cover up their lost academic sessions rather than organise top-notch athletics events from where future stars are to sprout. Without structures in place for talent hunting, which schools' sporting competitions shaped in the time past to produce the Innocent Egbunikes, Mary Onyalis and Falilat Ogunkoyas; and also institutions like Christ the King College (CKC) Onitsha, which won the world's schools football cup in 1977 in Ireland, any optimism for medals at future Olympics will be delusory.
Sports is purely a youth affair. Sadly, the myopia in governance at all levels has undermined its exploitation in pulling millions of youths out of poverty. Our rich footballers abroad, many of whom are from humble backgrounds, illustrate the transformational value of sports. Besides, the maximal utilisation of sports can address youth restiveness, which is presently posing national security threats.
D'Tigress' commendable showing had a Diaspora effect; so did some other events. But this trajectory is not ideal and will not last forever. The flicker from them can be sustained if we can aggressively build on it locally. For the Paris Olympics, Nigeria simply reaped what it had sown.
