In August 2024 Nigeria went through a period of civil unrest, as the country was rocked with ‘End Bad Governance protests’, in respect of which people had differing views depending on which side of the divide they were.  Coincidentally the unrest occurred at the same time as the 2024 Paris Olympics.  

Sports has always been a unifying factor in Nigeria and one thing that both the government and the citizens agree upon is that Nigeria’s 2024 Olympic outing was (to quote sports minister John Enoh) “disastrous”.  While I am centering this piece on the recently concluded Olympics my observations are applicable to virtually all sports and sporting bodies in Nigeria. 

When accosted with the case of Annette Nneka Echikunwoke, the African women’s hammer record holder, who after being let down by the incompetence of Nigerian officials at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics switched allegiance to the USA and won silver at the2024 Paris Olympics, a spokesperson for the sports ministry dismissed the issue saying they were not interested in Nigerians who participated for other countries, but were concentrating on those competing for Nigeria.  I disagree totally with this statement and resultant attitude.  Examining and understanding the past (and admitting our mistakes) is essential to our understanding how we got to where we are today and is imperative to our not making the same mistakes in future. If we can’t swallow humble pie, we might as well forget about sports.

In the 1996 Atlanta Olympics Nigeria’s football team beat the favourites (Argentina) to clinch the gold medal and Chioma Ajunwa beat world record holder Jackie Joyner-Kersee to win the gold medal in women’s long jump. How did Nigeria go from winning 6 medals (2 gold, 1 silver and 3 bronze) in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics to zero medals in Paris 2024?  As Rome was not built in a day, so the deplorable state of Nigerian sports did not happen overnight.  It is a culmination of years of maladministration.

CATCH THEM YOUNG: 

In the 2016 Rio Olympics, 16-year-old Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, of the USA competed in the women’s 400 metres hurdles reaching the semi-finals.  With the experience of Rio, she later went on to win gold in the same event in Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024.   The bronze medal in men’s long jump in Paris 2024 was won by a 19 year old teenager, Mattia Furlani.  These athletes did not start competing at Olympic level overnight.  This was a process from junior, intermediate to senior levels.  Nigeria must invest in youth sports programmes particularly in schools and at tertiary level.  There was a time in Nigeria when the average secondary schools had functioning tracks and pitches were adequately equipped for majority of sports.  Today, it is a story of dilapidation and misuse.

According to Nigeria’s first Olympic cycling contestant Ese Lovina Ukpeseraye, the National Stadium Abuja has a world class cycling but cyclists are banned from using it as sports administrators prefer to rent it out to religious bodies for most of the year!  There must be an inquiry into how much of the budget of the Ministry of Youths & Sports Development is actually being channeled into youth and sports development programmes.

RETAIN THEM AFTER CATCHING THEM: 

It is not enough to identify sports talents.  Today the world is a global village and talent in any sphere is mobile and sought after.  My mind goes to sad cases of Gloria Alozie and Francis Obikwelu.  Both incidents arose from the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Gloria Alozie was a world class 100 metres hurdler, regarded as one the best (if not the best at the time). Her main rival was Olga Shishigina of Kazakhstan and she was poised to clinch the gold medal. She was engaged to Hyginus Anugo a 400-metre runner.  Although he failed to qualify for the individual event Anugo travelled to Sydney to support his fiancé and was a reservist for the Nigerian 4x400m relay squad.  At the time Anugo arrived in Sydney Alozie was in Tokyo for an athletics meet.  It was in Tokyo that she got the news that her fiancé had been knocked down by a car and had died.  Distraught & inconsolable on arrival at Sydney, she performed admirably in her fiancé’s honour and won the silver medal.

Alozie’s ordeal was however just beginning.  Three weeks after his death Anugo’s body was still in Sydney. The reason being that after winning silver for her country, the Nigerian Olympic Committee “rewarded” her by refusing to repatriate the body back home on the grounds that he had not been an “official member” of the Nigerian Olympic team. Poor Alozie had to make and pay for the arrangements herself.  The Nigerian Olympic Committee’s attitude left an indelible mark on Alozie.  Is it any surprise that two years later she transferred her international allegiance from Nigeria to Spain?

In the case of Francis Obikwelu, as far back as 1996 he won gold for Nigeria at the World Junior Athletics Championship in Sydney Australia in the 100 & 200 metres.  After being injured while competing for Nigeria at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, he was neglected by the Athletics Federation of Nigeria.  After undergoing a successful knee operation in Canada, he changed allegiance to Portugal, winning several laurels for his adopted country over the coming years, including a silver medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics in the 100 meters. Obikwelu ran a blistering time of 9.86 seconds, setting a new European record. This performance made him the fastest European sprinter of all time, a record which stood for 16 years.

Apart from Annette Nneka Echikunwoke  who I earlier mentioned, 13 other athletes were denied the right to participate in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics due to the incompetence of officials of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria and the Nigerian Olympic Committee, who failed to pay for their dope tests.  Even those who were eligible to contest were not adequately kitted.  

Coming to the 2024 Paris Olympics, for Echikunwoke it was once bitten, twice shy and as stated earlier she changed allegiance to the United States of America.  For Favour Ofili who suffered the same fate as Echikunwoke in Tokyo 2020, in Paris 2024 it became a case of “double jeopardy” as the incompetence of Nigerian officials saw to it that she was not registered for her favourite event, the 100 meters.  For how long will this comedy of errors continue?

Nigeria went with a contingent of 82 Athletes and 84 officials.  The Government says it allocated NGN 9 billion (USD 5.7 million) to the Sports Ministry for the Summer Olympics (paralympics not included).  The question is how much was spent on the athletes themselves?  According to Sade Olatoye, Nigeria’s female shot putter, it wasn’t until she and her teammates reached the championship stage that they heard about potential grants, which barely covered two per cent of their four-year training expenses.  So again I ask where did the NGN 9 billion (USD 5.7 million)end up?

HONOURING CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATIONS: 

There is popular saying that ” a labourer is worthy of his wages“.  The perpetual saga of Nigerian officials short changing athletes and sportsmen of their lawful financial benefits has become nothing short of a national embarrassment.  

In November 2000, Nigeria’s female national soccer team, the Super Falcons staged a sit in protest at their hotel in Johannesburg after winning the 2000 African Women’s Football Championship over non payment of bonuses and allowances.

In December 2016, Nigeria’s national women’s soccer team, the Super Falcons, demonstrated outside the National Assembly to demand for unpaid bonuses for winning Africa’s international championship an eighth time.

In June 2019 Nigeria’s Super Falcons players refused to leave the team hotel in Grenoble France after their exit from the women’s World Cup on Saturday, demanding that the country’s soccer federation clears all of their outstanding bonus payments amounting to around 2 million Nigerian naira ($6,537) accumulated over three years, including for games against Gambia and Senegal, but only half that amount had been released to them.

In October 2021, members of the National Female Basketball team (the D’Tigress) accused officials of the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports Development of failing to distribute $100,000 (N41.1million) allowances donated by three banks to Nigeria’s women basketball team for their Tokyo 2020 Olympic participation.  They also revealed that their allowances, bonuses, training grant worth $4,900 had also not been paid.

In July 2022 Nigeria’s national women’s soccer team, the Super Falcons refused to leave their hotel in Casablanca over unpaid bonuses.

In July 2023, The House of Representatives summoned the Nigerian Football Federation over Super Falcons’ unpaid allowances and planned protest. 

Abi Olajuwon, the daughter of Nigerian-American NBA legend Hakeem Olajuwon, has publicly criticized the Nigerian Ministry of Sports for allegedly failing to pay wages following her significant contributions as an assistant coach to the Nigerian women’s basketball team, D’Tigress, at the Paris 2024 Olympics. She claimed that the assistant coaches, who dedicated immense effort and energy to scouting players across top leagues, were not compensated. Additionally, she suggested that the players themselves were not paid the previously agreed-upon bonuses for their participation in the Olympics.

UNDUE GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE WITH SPORTING BODIES:

Examples abound.

In October 2010, FIFA’s Emergency Committee listed several cases of government interference for its decision to indefinitely suspend the federation. Among these were court actions against elected members of the Nigerian Football Federation, the directives from the National Sports Commission for the acting General Secretary to step down, and the Sports Minister’s decision to start the Nigerian League without relegation from the previous season.

In July 2014, The Nigerian government removed the Nigerian Football Federation’s elected leader and replaced him with a handpicked government official. FIFA promptly suspended Nigeria from both club and international tournaments until the rightfully elected officials were restored.

In 2022, the Nigerian Female Basketball team was withdrawn from international basketball competitions for two years by the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports Development.  This was due to a crisis in the leadership of the Nigerian Basketball Federation which in the opinion of sports analyst was totally mishandled(if not perpetrated) by the Ministry.

In conclusion, the Nigerian ministry of sports, sports development & administration in the country needs a complete overhaul. Since the turn of the 21st century, the same problems seem to be plaguing the sporting development and administration in the country. while the likes of South Africa, Kenya and Ethiopia seem to be improving yearly in Olympic performance, Nigeria a country of more than 200 million people, the most populous country in Africa, is seriously lagging behind. The brain drain which is affecting the middle-class and highly skilled Nigerians seems to be slowly creeping into the sporting sector.

If something drastic isn’t done, we will have Nigerians winning major sporting honor’s in the colours of other country’s.