No wonder that the disappointing Nigeria’s participation in the just concluded Paris 2024 Olympic Games had sparked concerns among the totality of Nigerians particularly the followers of sports development in the country.
All of those that managed to say something were disenchanted with the country’s participation in the world’s most followership sports event tagged “Paris 2024” which ended poorly without a single medal as the 84 Nigerian representatives achieved nothing in athletics, basketball, boxing, table tennis, wrestling, and football they participated.
Historically, this marked the eighth time the country has failed to secure anything at the Olympics despite getting all its budget for the event from the Federal Government.
Even though Nigeria’s Sports Minister, John Owan Enoh, had since via an official statement apologized for the team’s failure to meet the expectations of Nigerians.
“I must apologize to our compatriots and reflect on what went wrong while looking forward to the Paralympic Games, Paris 2024(August 28- September 8th), ” the minister said.
“Our performance should have been a lot better… it obviously fell short of our objectives, expectations, and hopes of Nigerians,” Mr Enoh added.
The minister acknowledged the challenges faced by his ministry, including the short timeframe to prepare for the Olympics.
Mr Enoh stressed the need for lessons to be learned and improvements made, saying, “We deserve more… Let’s turn the disastrous outcome of the 2024 Olympics into a huge positive for Nigerian sports.”
But the Sports Minister did not hide his ministry’s appreciation to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for his financial support. And that indicated that the Federal government had done its quota by releasing all what was budgeted to the ministry, but it was the ministry and the athletes that failed the nation.
“The President and Commander in Chief of the Federation, HE Bola Ahmed Tinubu, ensured that funds were not a limiting factor,” Mr Enoh further explained.
But it is important to note that the poor Paris show has raised a number of questions about the effectiveness of our readiness and plans for the Games and the immediate need for an all-inclusive review of Nigeria’s sports development programs.
I was made to understand that the ministry has no athletes of its own but always relied on Delta, Bayelsa and Edo states athletes for every international event. Too bad.
To most of us that was the beginning of the problem because the Federal Ministry of Sports that is supposed to coordinate everything from start to the end has no hands in the training and upkeep of athletes, it only runs down to the aforementioned states for athletes.
Honestly, I don’t think that is how other countries operate. That is why most of us, especially those following sporting activities in the country, are sad and disappointed with the Paris Olympics 2024 outing.
So many people complained against the negative and unserious attitudes of Nigerian sporting authorities, thus, calling for a total overhaul to check their gross misconduct and excessiveness. That is why I mentioned above that the minister’s apology is not enough. Something more than that must be done to halt its reoccurrence.
Even the 2023 presidential candidate of Labour Party, Mr Peter Obi, has called on the federal government to investigate what he termed the ‘rascalities of leaders’ that always rob Nigeria of golden opportunities to make a positive change.
“Now that the Paris Olympics 2024 has officially ended and our dear Team Nigeria, despite the huge financial investment made into the project, is returning without a single medal, let me unreservedly register my displeasure with the performance of our team and their handlers,” Obi stated.
Mr. Obi further questioned why a country like Jamaica that spent less than 5% of what we spent on our contingents for the Paris event won as many as 6 medals.
“One wonders why with our huge financial investments and large contingent, we could not win even a single medal,” the 2023 presidential Labour Party candidate further explained.
But now that the Paris Olympics has come and gone with huge investments, but with so many sad and unfortunate stories to narrate, we must put heads together and chase away those people that have nothing to contribute and allow people with genuine interest to pilot the affairs of sports in the country, it will be difficult to develop talk less of doing something commendable.
It is obvious that it is only in this country that we have refused to embrace competence and capacity to deliver but partisan and favoritism. And that explained why with over 200m people we returned back home without even a bronze despite the N12 billion investments.
Just imagine with only 88 athletes we went to Paris with almost the same number of officials. This shows that some of them just went there to do nothing but to eat from the Federal Government largess.
That is why I am fully in support of the interrogation of the relationship between this huge investment and our dismal outcome. This is because we can’t allow it to go just like that. The minister’s apology is not enough and inadequate.
And those found wanting in this show of shame must be brought to book. We must investigate those behind the exclusion of Favour Ofili, who trained for years in readiness for the 2024 Olympics, only for her name to be recklessly and wrongly removed from the list of athletes for the 100m race at the Olympics must be brought to book.
We all witnessed how another athlete, Ese Ukpeseraye, had to borrow a bicycle to compete at her sporting event. Another bad experience.
That also indicated that most of that ministry of sports officials and others who made the entourage had no reason or business to be at the Olympics. Because they contributed nothing but only living large and feeding fat on the Estacodes while Nigeria returned with an empty medal bag.
Scandalously, Nigeria athletes returned without a single medal, is a repetition of the woeful outing in London at the London 2012 Olympic Games 12 years ago. Sad.
It is worthy to note that, while Nigeria failed, other African countries did very well and earned medals. Botswana’s Letsile Tebogo grabbed the men’s 200m gold, the first African to attain the feat.
Kenya won four Golds while Algeria got (two). But countries like Uganda, Tunisia, South Africa, Ethiopia, Egypt, and Morocco took one gold each apart from other silver and bronze medals some of them won.
Ivory Coast and Zambia too were not left out as their athletes returned to their respective countries with one bronze each.
That is why so many people are calling for the head of the minister of sports from office but I want to deviate from such a call because it was the ministry officials that are supposed to be sacked or scattered.
I know there are so many errors with our preparation, but whose fault? It was the ministry that was supposed to appoint the LOC and not the Minister for the purpose of athlete’s registration and other things necessary before going to Paris.
But according to stakeholders and disappointed sports stakeholders, Nigeria’s dismal performance at the 2024 Paris Olympics has been attributed to greedy and poor preparation by the Nigerian sports authorities.
The minister was talking about looking forward to the Paralympic Games, which will commence between August 28 to September 8th in Paris, I am afraid, if care is not taken, this is how it will come and go with nothing to smile home about.
It is necessary we put ourselves together and put down a roadmap that we all must follow to triumph in the subsequent international events.
If the truth were to be told, the nation’s poor outing was crucial to poor preparation thereby achieving nothing at the Olympics.
I was told that there were very few good coaches in Nigeria that could deliver and take us to promising land.
To stop the replica of the just concluded Paris fiesta, the ministry, the NOC and other stakeholders need to begin preparations for the Los Angeles 2028 Games now.
Because we are all in agreement that the only ways to raise future international champions are to have the mindset, readiness, passion, but visualization must come from athletes and the federations.
We have to be serious in our investment in grassroots sports development, as it is the one way we can develop sports throughout the country. That is the only way we can reverse our weak structure that always failed us.
What is before all of us now is to analyze the root causes of our shortcomings, problems that impede our plans and revisit fundamental principles which will guide us forward.
Even though it has been debated severally that it will be difficult for home based athletes to train locally and win a medal at the Olympics.
It was only Chioma Ajunwa and Blessing Oborodudu that were close to this but still had some foreign exposures before their feats at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 and Tokyo 2020 respectively.
Let us ask ourselves the following questions: can a local athlete win an Olympic medal?
Why most people will say no is because of the fact that local based athletes have no access to experienced, qualified and world-class coaches who can provide the latest scientific training techniques, tactics, strategies, guidance, mentorship, and skill development opportunities to them like their foreign counterparts.
Another difficult question is did local based athletes have access to Olympic standard training? The answer is certainly No because of the absence of facilities and coaches.
So the only way forward is the sports minister Honourable John Enoh is to look beyond his immediate environment and entrust the task to tested and trusted people. I see that as a well proffer solution to help build and stabilize the system.
Below I serialized 6 key suggestions that can help us out of that mess.
First is to send local administrators and local coaches back to school to learn the basics- modern trends of guidelines and coaching programmes that are being upgraded. It is paramount to educate our personnel first.
Secondly, to stop sloppy preparations and excuses, the fire brigade approach should be discouraged and embrace early preparation as the key with a long term master plan.
Next is to halt automatic tickets and means everyone must go through the preliminary round and qualify to scale through.
Every athlete must have his original birth certificates or school reports enhancing grassroots development and grooming of talents. This will halt recycling of old athletes.
Qualification to wear our colors should be based on merit. No automatic ticket. Make a local sport rewarding system especially in the grassroot levels. It will help a lot.