The Olympic games is serious business, and even more serious to have a podium finish. To win a medal of any shade or colour at the games is not a tea party. It takes a lot of training, preparation, funding, sacrifice and planning to make that dream come true.
This is because the Olympic is the gathering of the finest stars from all over the world. It is the best amongst the best. Make no mistake to think that luck is enough to win at the quadrennial games. Those who are confident of winning at this year’s games, started many years back to prepare. It is not by accident but a function of preparedness and following through a well-thought out plan or program.
It is however, not surprising that exactly 25 years since after Chioma Ajunwa –Okpara (MON) leapt to glory at Atlanta in 1996, to win gold in an emphatic manner in the women’s long jump event, making her the first African woman in history to attain such an enviable feat, Nigeria and in deed Africa is yet to witness a repeat of such heroics from another athlete at the games.
This is not as a result of dearth or lack of talents, but due to many man-made factors which will be highlighted in the preceding paragraphs.
Nigeria is yet to define what exactly they want or wish to achieve with the Olympics. And until that is done, it will continue to be a jamboree or funfair of sort for administrators and athletes alike. Otherwise, how can one explain that a nation as gifted as Nigeria in sports talents, is finding it hard to make any meaningful impact as far as the Olympics is concerned. This is completely unacceptable.
What’s Nigeria’s sports policy? What happened to the robust schools’ games of old that we all know? The National Sports Festival has lost colour, the grassroots have been neglected, thereby denying Nigeria the opportunity to discover and nurture the new Chidi Imos, Mary Onyalis, Davidson Ezinwas, Innocent Egbunikes, Sunday Badas, Peter Konyegwachis, Jeremiah Okorodudus, Francis Obikwelus, Yusuf Alis, Fallilat Ogunkoyas, Segun Toriolas, Funke Oshinaikes etc.
One of the greatest undoing of Nigeria is the fire brigade approach to competitions. Unfortunately, this will only lead to colossal fiasco when it comes to the Olympics. Every serious minded country begins preparation for the next games immediately after the last edition. This means a four-year planning and preparation period. The athletes are monitored closely in order to oversee their development and progress. Beside the fact that they are well motivated with training grants paid by their governments, they train under the best coaches and with the best sporting equipment and facilities.
The same cannot be said of Nigerian athletes who are under motivated, struggle to pay their coaches as their training grant comes only few months to the games if they are lucky to even get at all. And yet we expect them to perform magic or miracles during the games.
Again, the country has abandoned and neglected the sports where we have comparative advantage. Sports like sprints, relays, boxing, weightlifting, long jump are areas where Nigeria always do well and can dominate if adequate attention is paid to these areas. But instead of focusing more on these areas, we are busing chasing shadows where we are disadvantaged. The end result is nothing but regrets and woeful failure.
Therefore, for Nigeria to rediscover herself at the Olympic games, the country need to seriously retrace her steps to things we used to do that worked for us. Things like massive scouting of talents nationwide and giving scholarships to such talents to study abroad where they can be better nurtured and train under world class coaches and exposed to the best facilities. All we just need to do is to ensure we monitor their development and progress.
We also need to revamp our schools’ sports to the level where it was before, if we wish to make new leeway. We need to rejig the National sports festival to make it more suitable and appropriate for what we intend to achieve.
But above all, we need a crack sports document or policy to run with, as a guide or blueprint if Nigeria truly mean to improve her fortunes in sports generally.
