Nigeria’s shameful Olympics outing

By Punch Editorial Board

TEAM Nigeria has journeyed back to its shame at the London 2012 Olympic Games as the Paris 2024 Olympics closed on Sunday. Disgracefully, Nigeria returned without a medal, a banal mimicry of the woeful outing 12 years ago in London.

Among others, the 84 Nigerian representatives performed woefully in athletics, basketball, boxing, table tennis, wrestling, and football. It is a sobering moment for the so-called ‘Giant of Africa.’ Instead of mouthing rhetoric and looking for scapegoats among the sports federation bosses, it bears repeating that the ministry should begin the preparations for the Los Angeles 2028 Games immediately.

There is no excuse for the outing in Paris. Rightly, the Minister of Sports, John Enoh, described it as a disaster. The humiliation was spiced by fleeting moments of triumph. D’Tigress won two group games against Australia and Canada in women’s basketball, becoming the first African team to reach the quarterfinal. That was interspersed with the men’s 4x400m relay team, which took second in the semifinals but was disqualified for lane violation.

Nigeria probably put all its eggs in one basket. Tobi Amusan, the best hope, and the world record holder at 12.12secs, crashed out of the women’s 100m hurdles in the semis. Controversy dogged the team as the Athletic Federation of Nigeria and the Nigeria Olympic Committee mismanaged Favour Ofili’s registration in the women’s 100m.

The Super Falcons crashed out in the group stage; the boxers, wrestlers, weightlifters, and table tennis players suffered the same ignominy.

It was an unpleasant moment for those nostalgic about the past. Yet, the handwriting was clear. In the intervening Games between London and Paris, Team Nigeria recorded only three medals – none of them gold. In Rio 2016, the U23 men’s team secured bronze. At the delayed Tokyo 2020 Games, Blessing Oborodudu (wrestling) and Ese Brume (long jump) medalled. This suggests that Team Nigeria is poor.

To complete Nigeria’s shame, other African countries did proudly in Nigeria’s traditional areas of strength. Botswana’s Letsile Tebogo grabbed the men’s 200m gold, the first African to attain the feat. Kenya won four golds (17th in the world), relying on its strength in middle/long distance races; Algeria (two), Uganda, Tunisia, South Africa, Ethiopia, Egypt, and Morocco took one gold each apart from other silver and bronze medals. Ivory Coast and Zambia returned home with one bronze each.

In Nigeria, sports federations are poorly funded and managed. Politics prevail over common sense and merit in appointments to federation boards, excluding the passionate. Preparations are thin. Most national competitions, including the National Sports Festival, are a shadow of their past.

The worst is the appointment of novices as sports ministers. The fault lies at the door of the Presidents since 1999. They use sports to reward politicians instead of appointing capable administrators. This does not need money, just wisdom.

President Bola Tinubu can return Nigeria to its halcyon days. In the Barcelona ’92 Games, Nigeria had two finalists in the men’s and one in the women’s 100m. With 7.12m, Chioma Ajunwa gave Nigeria its first athletics gold at Atlanta ’96. The U23 team beat Argentina to the gold in the ’96 Games and a silver at Beijing 2008.

First, Tinubu should appoint a competent sports minister. The incumbent, Enoh, is toying with the idea of interfering with the upcoming federation elections. He should perish the thought; he will end up generating bad blood and filling the federations with political jobbers. The result will be more disastrous. He should allow the federations to choose by themselves.

Nigeria should revive the NSF, and restore the national meets in athletics, table tennis, basketball, handball, volleyball, and others. The country should internationally sponsor athletes to overseas universities through scholarships and grants. With a virile economy, the sponsors from the private sector will return.