By Daily Sports Nigeria on August 14, 2024

Following Nigeria’s poor outing at the Paris 2024 Olympics, ABIODUN ADEWALE writes on the plight of Nigerian sports and its future at major competitions

Another Olympics is gone, and the tales of woes about Nigerian sports are back on the front burner.

For the eighth time in the country’s Olympic history, which began in Helsinki in 1952, Nigeria failed to win a medal at the just-concluded 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

The failures began with the country’s debut in 1952, which was followed by more fruitless outings at Melbourne 1956, Rome 1960, Mexico 1968, Moscow in 1980, Seoul in 1988, and London 2012.

This failure is particularly alarming because of the amount of money, N9bn, from a total budget of N12bn that was approved for Nigeria’s participation. The remaining N3bn is said to be for the Paralympics, which begin in 15 days.

Coincidentally, the 88 athletes on parade for Nigeria in 12 sports in Paris is also the largest contingent the country has ever presented at the Games.

From a neutral point of view, the N9bn expended on the fruitless outing in Paris is a whopping amount of money, which could build different kinds of infrastructure for people in dire need. In a country where the World Bank projects about 40.7 per cent of the over 200 million population to live below the international poverty of $2.15 per person per day by the end of 2024, that’s too much money for a jamboree in the name of participating at the Olympics.

But as it is, the incommensurable investment and result at the Paris Olympics is a reflection of the rascality and recklessness that have continued to characterise leadership in the country, according to the presidential candidate of the Labour Party during the 2023 General Elections, Peter Obi.

“We must now interrogate the relationship between this huge investment and our dismal outcome. Sad stories like this are our lot only because we have refused to embrace competence and capacity over routine and favouritism in Nigeria,” Obi queried in an X post.

Among the 88 athletes that represented Nigeria in Paris, there were a few medal hopefuls, like world record holder in women’s 100m hurdles Tobi Amusan, Blessing Oborodudu, who won silver in Tokyo 2020, Ese Brume, who won bronze in Tokyo, and Odunayo Adekuoroye, among others.

How the country failed to win anything is baffling, even to the Minister of Sports Development, John Enoh.

“The Olympic Games, Paris 2024, have ended, and I accept that our performance should have been a lot better. It obviously fell short of our objectives, expectations, and hopes of Nigerians. I must apologise to our compatriots and reflect on what went wrong while looking forward to the Paralympic Games.

“In all these, the President and Commander in Chief of the Federation, HE Bola Ahmed Tinubu, ensured that funds were not a limiting factor. Athletes’ competition requirements were provided, allowances were paid early, and training grants were disbursed to all athletes. I made myself readily available to deal with any issue throughout the competition. Therefore, the underwhelming performance of our team is puzzling. We owe Nigerians an explanation,” Enoh lamented in a statement on Sunday.

Poor preparations

The Sports Minister has tried to shift the blame by reminding Nigerians that preparations for the Olympics had not started when he assumed office in August 2023, but that alone speaks volumes about the systemic failure at the helm.

Despite claiming to have taken care of the athletes during the training camps in Germany and Spain, there was still a lot left to be desired in the planning of Olympic camps between the Ministry of Sports Development, the National Olympic Committee, and the various sports federations.

For instance, the women’s national football team, the Super Falcons, had a 10-day camp in Seville, Spain, ahead of the women’s football tournament, where they faced eventual silver medallists Brazil, world champions Spain, and Asian powerhouse Japan. As good as their pre-Olympic training seemed, they didn’t have the full complement of the 18 invited players in the camp until a few days before the end of their training due to visa and accreditation issues, which weren’t sorted by officials of the Nigeria Football Federation.

In another case, the 35 track and field athletes who camped in Germany also faced mundane issues as coaching because some of the Nigerian coaches were not catered for in the budget. That is different from the decision of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria to drop the Nigerian relay coach for a foreign coach from the school of one of the athletes.

“Our preparations have always been poor, with an emphasis on winning medals and not preparing athletes,” Niran Adeniji, a former president of the Badminton Federation of Nigeria, told The PUNCH.

“If we prepare athletes, and we have one or two that are good, we will win medals. The other thing is in our policy. We should concentrate on individual athletes. We can’t go into everything. Kenya concentrated on the long distance and is now in the middle distance. Our problem is in the preparation and policy.”

National record holder in the men’s 400m and Los Angeles 1984 bronze medallist, Innocent Egbunike, also bemoaned Nigeria’s poor preparations for the Games.

“It takes a lot to do what ought to be done. Preparation goes a long way, and it’s all about mindset for athletes too because it’s a big dance,” Egbunike said on an X Space monitored by The PUNCH during the Olympics.

“It’s not about where we are right now but where we ought to have been 10 years ago. For the future, we need to prepare way earlier than this.”

Poor funding

Over time, there have been public outcries about appointing former athletes to head specific leadership roles in sports. While some of these ex-stars have not covered themselves in glory, getting into the mix is like the proverbial camel’s head passing through the eye of a needle.

“They can’t approach you; you told them to hold positions because you are a threat to them. If you can’t do what they are doing, then it’s to hell with you,” 1996 Olympic gold medallist Ajunwa said during a TV interview on Sunday.

One of the controversial cases that bedevilled Nigeria’s campaign in Paris was poor administration, and that was seen in the omission of Favour Ofili for the women’s 100m race.

In other cases, there were Nigerians who won medals for other countries. Notable among them is Annette Echikunwoke, who became America’s first female Olympic medallist in the hammer throw. She could have competed for Nigeria at the delayed Tokyo Games in 2021, but due to the negligence of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria, she missed out on competition tests and was among the 10 Nigerians barred from completion in Tokyo.

She switched her allegiance to her country of birth, the USA, won silver at the Olympics and still holds the African record in the women’s hammer throw.

“Nigeria has a sea of talents, but we have not tapped into our talents, and it’s shameful. How far have we come? When I was growing up, Nigeria was called the ‘Giant of Africa’. We raised a lot of countries that are kicking our tail, not because they have more talents, but because it’s about administration,” Egbunike lamented.

“Most of these athletes competing for other countries have Nigerian blood in them. A population of over 200 million people, what have we to show for it?”

What’s an Olympics without Nigerian controversy?

When results don’t ring the bell for Nigeria at international competitions like the Olympics, the country has a way of making the headlines for the wrong reasons.

From disallowing the D’Tigress to be part of the opening ceremony to the blame game between the AFN and the NOC over the omission of Ofili from the women’s 100m event, and without forgetting the kit saga between the Ministry of Sports Development and the NOC, the Sports Minister, Enoh, surely had more than enough explanations to make during and after the 17-day multi-sport event.

In Ofili’s case, the minister has promised to get to the root of the matter, but the ugly trend in the payment of athletes’ training grants is likely going to rear its head again.

After the Sports Minister, in his usual explanatory manner, announced that the training grants of the athletes had been disbursed, he was met by an outcry over the disparity in the amount paid to foreign and local-based athletes.

The PUNCH learnt that the foreign-based athletes were paid a sum of $5,000 as their training grant for the Games, while their local counterparts got $1,000.

Nigeria’s first individual gold medallist at the Olympics, Chioma Ajunwa, described the move as more dangerous to the athletes’ ambitions in Paris.

“As far as I know, athletes’ training grants are supposed to be paid months before the athletes’ camp for the Games. The minister might have done what’s within his jurisdiction by paying them, but disbursing the money during the Games is doing more harm than good.”

Los Angeles 2028

While Nigerians await the result of the planned review of the sports minister, who has accused the previous administration of not starting preparations on time, it behoves him to set the ball rolling for the next Games in Los Angeles in 2028.

At the same time, stakeholders have continued to echo the return of the National Sports Commission just and also hold sports federations and the NOC accountable.

“The sports ministry is just too big. I think it is better we bring back the National Sports Commission because it will focus deeply on sports and is even more controllable. From my experience in working with chairmen of associations and sports federations, having the commission will help manage the gap of administration,” former NOC Vice President Lanre Glover told The PUNCH.

Former badminton boss Adeniji also said, “The Nigeria Olympic Committee has to dance to the tune of the ministry because they don’t have money of their own. They will get money from the Olympics, but there are parameters involved, and it’s not sufficient, and I don’t know what they do with it. The athletes are handed over to them two or three weeks before the games, so the bulk of the work is on the federations.

“The federations too are poorly funded. They are not doing enough to get sponsors, while the corporate bodies are not encouraged to keep pumping money. When they give money, they want to see value for the money, so it’s difficult to attract sponsorship these days.”

‘See Paris and Die’ was a common saying in the 1960s, highlighting Paris as life’s ultimate experience. As Nigeria’s Olympic journey to Paris ended without a medal, hopefully, it marks the death of such barrenness, which has characterised Nigerian sports at eight editions of the Olympics and other major international competitions.

Source Punch Ng

Posted August 14, 2024

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