Daniel Igali is one of the best known faces in international amateur wrestling. The retired wrestler, who won a gold medal for Canada at the 2000 Olympic Games in Australia, has been President of the Nigerian Wrestling Federation (NWF) for the past 11 years. He has taken the sport from its crawling state to a level that Nigeria is now rated as one of the world’s best nations in the sport.

Igali will leave office next year when his third tenure expires, but the Bayelsa State sports commissioner, rather than clinging to power, is elated that the sport is in a good state and has capable hands willing to continue from where he will stop.

Reflecting on his tenure as NWF president, the Olympian, who was in Lagos last week, said the federation has performed beyond the resources available to it, adding, however, that he is sad he has not been able to achieve some of his targets.

He said: “We have qualified six of our athletes for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. They include one male and five female wrestlers. Last year, Odunayo Adekuoroye qualified for the Olympics by virtue of winning a bronze medal at the World Championships. For the record, that was the only medal of any sport Nigeria won at all the 2023 world championships.

“At the Oceania/Africa Olympics qualifier, we were able to qualify four girls and one male, Ashton Mutuwa. Unfortunately, Mercy Genesis, who, in my view, is a dark horse for a medal at the Olympics, did not qualify. She was leading with nine seconds to go when she got confused and didn’t know that they had blown the whistle. In that state, her opponent went behind her to beat her. She protested that she did not hear the whistle, but the officials did not listen to her. She still has one opportunity in Istanbul, Turkey, around May 5 at the last World Olympics qualifying tournament.

“We hope we will have seven athletes at the Olympics. If we do that, we will be among the few countries to qualify the whole team for the Games.”

Igali said it is important the NWF finds a credible successor to him next year, adding that a good leader will find it easy to take the sport to higher heights.

Although Igali has had a successful tenure as NWF president, he still feels there are certain targets his board has failed to achieve. One of such targets is winning a World Championship and Olympics gold medal.

According to Igali, “being the NWF president gave me opportunity to do some of the things I did my own way. When I was the technical adviser, I had a very good president, but I didn’t have my way all the time. So, being president gave me opportunity to do that.

“I don’t know if we were able to achieve everything we wanted to achieve. I had thought that we would be able to get a world champion and at least one Olympic gold medallist. Those were my ambition.

“We have won silver medals and bronze, but you know, an Olympic gold medal is completely different from every other medal. Canada had never won a gold medal until I came around in 2000. And in male wrestling, none of their male athletes have been able to wrestle for a silver medal. The competition is tougher than it was in the 1990s.”

He said the competition in wrestling is now tougher than it was in the 1990s, adding that the breakup of Soviet Union, with about 15 countries emerging from the bloc, has made the sport more competitive.

“It is now more difficult to win a World Championship or Olympics medal. The level is a lot higher and it has made us to step up our efforts.

“Apart from that, funding has been a major issue. I strongly believe that the likes of Adekuoroye and Blessing Oborodudu and even the male wrestlers like Amas Daniel, because of the level of his talent, and Sinivie Boltic, who was in the semifinal at the World Championship, are capable of winning gold medals.

“If we had enough funding, we would have been thinking of them as world champions and Olympic gold medalists by now. If I had any regret, that is about the only regret I have, that the funding expectations did not meet our ambitions in wrestling.

“The big elephant in the room is poor funding for sports development in the country. I recently had a discussion with the minister and he wanted to know how we can win medals at the Olympics. I told him that we cannot win medals at the level we are, if this funding paradigm is sustained in Nigeria. And this is why I said that: Even some African states like Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and South Africa have budgets of more than $1 million. Since I became NWF president, I have not received any money for sports development from the ministry. What Nigeria does is fund games…if you are going to the Olympics, African Games or Commonwealth Games, they will find a way of sending the athletes to that championship.

“They do not think of how these athletes would be trained to become champions. There is no developmental programme; there is nothing the federation does to prepare the athletes, their coaches and referees for championships or for the development of athletes.

“When we are talking about development, we are talking about charting the pathway for success. For instance, if the wrestling federation knows that, as obtains in other climes, it has $500,000 for the season. We will use to prepare the athletes for competitions and also sit down and look at the number of cadet competitions available; the ones we will go to and the coaches to go with the team.

“Wrestling has six national teams and if you want to succeed, the cadet teams must go to African, world and other championships because they are the ones you are preparing to take over from the senior teams.

“As I speak to you, my cadet athletes have only gone to championships twice since my tenure and one of the times was sponsored by Bayelsa State government, who took three of their athletes to the championship.”

He lamented that Nigeria and India were at par in the sport in 2009 up till 2011, saying that the Asians are now far above the country because they have had better funding for their activities.

“Tata Motors sponsors them yearly with $3 million. Today India is the cadet champions of the world. The moment you have that level of sponsorship sustained over three years, you will see a big change. That is what Nigeria is lacking.”

Igali said poor funding is also hampering other sports’ development, declaring that the country’s sports federations must have budgets like such other countries as Australia, Britain, Egypt and the United States.

“Sometimes you have discussions with some eggheads and they ask you, ‘what are your plans?’ You just look at them because you have no plan. You cannot have any plan if you don’t have any idea of where the funds will come from. You cannot plan without money.

“If you know that you have N1 million, then you will plan with a million naira. But when there is nothing to plan with, there is nothing you can do.

“What happens in Nigeria is that you write to the ministry of sports three months before any championships and wait until three days to the championship when they will tell you they have approved some money for you. You may have 20 athletes in camp and the money they approved will only be enough for three athletes. So, you are forced to tell the others to go home. That is what we do in Nigeria.

“But take a poor country like Cuba, as an example; they don’t have money but there is no Olympics they fail to win at least three gold medals. This is because they have a system that utilises physical education in schools to produce rounded athletes.

“If you are Cuban, even if you are disabled, you must learn one or more sports as a child. The good ones grow up to become fantastic athletes. Cuba takes physical and health education as priority in their primary schools. They jump to the cadet from primary schools and then to the senior level.”

He said the Cuban government is intentional in what it wants to do with sports.

According to Igali, Cuba now exports coaches to other parts of the world because of the system they operate. “They have coaches all over Africa working as expatriates. In fact, we are looking at bringing in Cuban coaches here too.”

On the forthcoming Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Igali said it would be difficult for Nigeria to win any medal, adding the country’s best medal prospect is Tobi Amusan.

“But if you look at her records last year, she was fourth in her field. The United States will tell you how many medals they will win in every championship because they know how they have prepared their athletes and what they can do.

“Last year, only one person won a World Championship bronze medal and that is in wrestling. One dark horse might spring up to surprise the world, but you don’t wait for miracles like that to happen; you plan.

“I have been running up and down in search of money for my federation and I think it is now time to beg President Tinubu to help us. We must get that willpower to get funds for sporting federations to thrive. If we start now, we may not get it in this Olympics, but we will be successful in 2028 and 2032. We must put our money where our mouths are. We have philanthropists, who can help sports to thrive in Nigeria.”

The NWF president urged the Federal Government to turn to sports to cushion the effects of the difficult economy on Nigerians, saying that the sector has the potential to pull many of the country’s youths out of poverty and away from crime.

“We have so many issues… instability in the country with respect to security issues and I think the only solace we have is sports. So, this government should make sports a priority because although sport is an expensive venture, the benefits far outweigh whatever we put into developing it.

“We just went with a contingent of 20 to Alexandria for the African Championships and Olympics qualifiers for 11 days and it cost us N115 million. That is how expensive it is.

“We must be aware that it will cost a lot of money to fund sports, but that is money we will get back over and over in terms of what it will do to our national psyche,” he said.

Igali assured Nigerians that he would still be in the system even after leaving office, saying that he will support whoever takes over from him to realise the country’s dream of an Olympic gold medal in wrestling.

“I am a member of the International Bureau of Wrestling, so, I will have a lot of say in the development of wrestling, at least for the next four years. My successor should be someone who is passionate about developing wrestling. He doesn’t necessarily have to have a deep pocket, but it must be a president that has the power to pay for an athlete to attend an international championship from his pocket.”

“We have some of such people on the board, but I have not had extensive discussion with any of them. I am sure we will get somebody to fit the bill.”

He thanked members of his board for their unflinching support in the last 11 years, saying he has been lucky to have intelligent and selfless people in his team.

“The ministry did not at any time invite us because of any dispute. The board has never been compelled to settle any quarrel among us. I am lucky that I have a board that understands the way we are going and supports it well.

“What I did not enjoy is the lack the funds to plan. If we had funds, we would have produced gold medallists at the Olympics and the world championships,” he boasted.

Although some of the country’s top wrestlers have moved abroad to work as coaches and lecturers, Igali said that he is proud of the fact that all the country’s wrestlers were trained in Nigeria.

“We have our brand of wrestling and I believe that the reason we perform very well is because of the genes we have.

“When I came back from Canada, we started changing the way the athletes trained, the food they eat and the hours they sleep. Our athletes go to championships abroad and return to the country, because they travel four, five times every year to compete, and therefore, nothing is new to them anymore.

“I believe that if we set up a proper system here, people will be coming to train in Nigeria.

We have a system in Bayelsa that has made it a model for training. I get calls from the United States, Australia and other countries who want to come to Bayelsa to train. It is just that I don’t have the time, otherwise, we will have people coming to pay to train with us.”