Memo to President: Time to halt downward slide in sports (2)

In the 2000s, the nation saw Enefiok Udo-Obong, Nduka Awazie, Olusoji Fasuba, Aaron Egbele, James Godday, Saul Weigopwa, Franca Idoko, Gloria Kemasuode, Halimat Ismaila, Oludamola Osayomi, Agnes Osazuwa, Blessing Okagbare rise to prominence and team up with some of the athletes from the nineties to win for Nigeria one Gold and two Bronze medals at 2000 and 2008 Olympic Games.

Okagbare was introduced to the world in 2008 and she won Nigeria a bronze medal in the 2008 Olympic Games. Since then, Okagbare has done Nigeria proud by being the first Nigerian athlete to win a medal at the World Championships since 1999, and has been our only hope at every international competition, the only flag bearer for a nation of over 180 million people.

Athletics from 2008

Now, the question is, what happened to our sport since 2008? Why are we going backwards when the rest of the world is advancing, including some of the countries we liberated like South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe just to mention a few. Where did we go wrong? Why do we have to rely on one athlete when we had had between three to four athletes running under 11:10 in the women 100m, between four to five men running under 10:05sec in the men’s 100m, we had four women that ran between 49 seconds and 50 seconds in the 400m, three to four male athletes that ran under 45.1 at any given time.

Things in Nigeria’s track and field have become so bad to the point that we only go to world competitions to register our presence. We had been medal contenders in the past and these days we celebrate making finals, we could spin things to make us look good but the facts are there, our best athlete is ranked top four in the world, which is the highest ranking for any of our athletes and the rest of our athletes in the events we dominated are not ranked within top 70 in the world and this is sad and unacceptable.

Brazzaville 2015 second placing

As I read the articles from the African Games and reflect on our performance at the World Championships, we did well at the All African Games, but in comparing our performances to medal contenders, we are a junior team in comparison to the rest of the world. Congratulations to our athletes at the African Games, the question now is who replaces Okagbare when she retires? She has done well and it is unfair to see her carry the burden of a country on her shoulders, like she did at the World Championships,
I was saddened to see how far behind we are in comparison to the rest of the world. Some of the athletes that represented the other countries are a new breed of athletes, they rose to prominence within the past four years, some were juniors from 2012, and have become senior athletes and in some cases World Championship medalists in this just concluded World Championships. Most countries, at the just concluded African Games, sent their third tier (junior athletes) while we sent our best athletes, we literally competed in what has become more of a development competition for the rest of Africa and big championship for Nigeria. We called ourselves the “Giant of Africa” and my question is how can we now stand to be the peanut of Africa and celebrate mediocre performance in Africa, when the rest of the World is celebrating victories in world competitions?

I struggle with what is going on because of the chemistry of what is going on in our sport. While the rest of the world is investing in developmental programmes we have invested in recycling our athletes from 12 years back, and are reduced to buying foreign athletes giving them Nigerian passport. Is this what a country that calls itself the “Giant of Africa” should be doing? Our history shows that as a people we have produced some of the best in the world in the past, in the past most countries were afraid of us, but today, we have become a laughing stock all because we decided to abandon our developmental programme by going for quick fix programmes. As a people, one of the things that hold us together is our love for sports.

We are over one 180 million strong with great intellectuals, hard working people with great minds and I believe that we should take pride in building our youth programmes in all aspects of life and most of all, in sports. I grew up with the slogan “the young shall grow”. The young is surely grown but with no directions, everyone wants quick fix. We will need to overhaul the way we look at our models from the seventies, eighties and learn from such countries as the USA, Jamaica, Bahamas so we can compete with the best in the world in this 21st century. We cannot afford to continue to regress and see everyone around us progressing.

Way forward

We need to plan ahead, a failure to plan is a plan to fail, and to avoid this downhill spiral, we need to stop all the bickering and bring in sports administrators with a vision, individuals with goals, willing to advance sports in Nigeria from day one when they take office. We need a Sports Minister that will set the standard, set up a code of conduct for the administrators and make sure they abide by every rule. We need a Sports Minister that is willing to lead, one that will have the trust of the masses from day one in office, someone that can be trusted and will be willing to work with anyone regardless of any personal differences. We need individuals that will respect the office of the position they are in, we do not need Sports Minsters or administrators that are there to impress the athletes, we need administrators that will hold the athletes accountable. We are one Nigeria and no one individual is bigger than our nation. We need to contract our administrators with performance standard like we do with the athletes. It is about time we hold the administrators accountable the same way the administrators hold the athletes accountable.

I will suggest that we go back to the nitty gritty and roll up our sleeves and get busy in developing grassroots programmes, hire coaches with resume, coaches that have been tested, have good character and are willing to be good role models to our sport. To move forward, we need to have a Sports Minister that will be the President Buhari of Sports, who will overhaul the sector, and bring the change that started in the power sector to the sports sector.

• Egbunike, an Olympic and World Championship medalist, lives in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.