.By Akaninyene Esiere
Two hundred and six countries (including AIN and EOR) participated in the just concluded Paris, France 2024 Summer Olympic Games. AIN, in the context of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games is french for Individual Neutral Athletes (Athletes Individuels Neutres) meant to enable athletes from Russia and Belorussia compete in the Olympics as individuals not representing their countries due to the war in Ukraine. While EOR is Equipe Olympique des Refugies…persons forced to leave their countries in order to escape war, persecution or natural disasters but allowed to participate in the games. From these 206 countries were 10,714 athletes who participated in 32 sports subdivided into 48 disciplines with a total of 312 events. The tournaments, which started on Wednesday, July 25, 2024, lasted for 19 days.
Of the 206 participating nations, Nigeria was one of them. When the curtains on the world’s most popular sporting events drew on Sunday, August 11, 2024, 1,436 medals were given away to individuals (and by extension nations) who finished top three in each of the 312 sporting events. Of the 206 countries, 91 carted away all the medals. Nigeria was not one of the countries that won medals.
Let me say it louder: Nigeria, the most populous black nation on earth, the giant of Africa with over 236,000,000 humans (now comfortably the sixth most populous nation on earth) returned home with zero medals. It would not be the first time. At seven previous Olympics, the most recents being the 1980 Moscow, the 1988 Seoul and the 2012 London Olympics, Nigeria returned empty handed, hands on its head as a bereaved child.
However, at Paris 2024, Albania (3 million peoples) Cape Verde (600,000), Dominica 77,000), and Saint Lucia (190,000) had their first medals. Put together, these four countries’ population is equal to the population of Alimosho Local Government Area in Lagos State! Dominica and Saint Lucia even won winning gold. Both the United States of America and China won 40 gold medals apiece.
John Enoh, the minister of sports development, for want of a better word declared that the country’s outing in Paris 2024 was a disaster. He should have followed up with a resignation letter to the President and taken responsibility for the country’s abysmal performance at the Mondial. It is not enough for him to declare that our outing was disastrous, nor for him to start looking for who to blame; which he had started doing by saying that his ministry was going to be extra careful in the election of executives to the various sport federations said to be coming up in few months time. His resignation would have sent the right message that he failed woefully. Many of the countries that won medals do not have ministries designated for sports development. Just last month, the head of the United States’ secret service resigned following an attempt on the life of Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate in the November election. So why can’t it happen in Nigeria? As far as sports is concerned, the buck stops with the minister for sports. He should take the fall. Where that does not happen, the President should issue him a red card. If he doesn’t, he should change the name of the ministry from that of sports development to sports underdevelopment!
To be sure, the last Olympic Games held three years ago in Tokyo, Japan. It should have held in 2020 but was moved by a year due to the outbreak of the pandemic, COVID-19 in December 2019 in China. So, Nigeria, just like other countries had enough time to plan properly for Paris 2024. To think that countries not even the population the size of Alimosho (Nigeria’s largest local government area by population) would win medals and Nigeria came back with nothing is beyond imagination. Just so you know, we were told the federal government released N12 billion to prosecute the games. This is inclusive of the Paralympic Games (rest assured not more than 10 percent of the money would be used for the latter games) as well as 88 athletes. The number of athletes participating from Nigeria was the highest ever in any Olympic competition, which means that we ought to have returned with the highest number of medals. Kenya, which won the most medals in Africa went with 72 athletes and returned with 11 medals (two gold). Even Uganda with 24 athletes won two medals and the Tunisian team with 27 athletes won three medals.
I need to say a word or two about China, which in my estimation came tops with 40 gold, 27 silver and 24 bronze medals (91 medals in all); just below United States with same number of gold, 44 silvers and 42 bronze. Some five years ago, the Peoples Republic of China set out a 50 year National Sports Development Plan. The main objective of the plan is to be the undisputed world champion in sports. We can already see the results of this plan; and they are just getting started even in games that were once alien to the Chinese.
Every good thing is deliberate and intentional. Nationals (and by extension individuals) with visions plan. They know that good things do not just happen by accident. But in my beloved country, we think that we can stumble into success in life. It does not work that way. When you have made a choice in life, you have automatically chosen the consequences already. As it has become apparent, Nigeria woke up to the reality of Paris 2024 few months to the event, as if it had just been announced. Our athletes were said to have been assembled for practice in Germany two weeks to the start of the Olympics. As if this was not bad enough, information has it that the Nigerian officials introduced apartheid in the sharing of practice allowance by discriminating against local based athletes. The foreign based athletes were said to have been paid $6,000 training grants while locals received $1,500. The Guardian newspaper quoted one of the athletes as saying “From the moment the training grants were paid, things began to take a different shape in the camp. And what followed was a series of bad results from the competition venues.” Someone must have punched his calculator and decided that N2.25M was already a lot of money for Nigerian based athletes! Poor thinking!!
If you think that Olympics is not a big deal, ask Botswana! Winning their first gold medal in history, the poor country went into a frenzy for days; and when Letsile Tebogo, the 21 year old gold medalist returned home, he was given a heroic welcome reserved only for topmost royalties. He did not only make history for his country, he became the first African to win the men’s 200m, in an African record time of 19.46sec.
The number one challenge with running competition sports in Nigeria is the well worn Nigerian Factor: my person must participate, whether he or she is competent and qualified or not. Where I learn to play tennis, there is this 23 year old “coach” by name Abdullahi. The young man is very good at tennis and has no business coaching anyone other than going to win laurels. But he takes into coaching in order survive because he does not have people high up there to engage him in competitive tennis matches beyond the elementary level. Technically, his career has ended even before it started. We know talents all over this country in football and other sports wasting away because they do not know anyone to introduce them to local clubs for them to prove their mettles. Those who do not have the connections will need to have the money to bribe their way through. You hardly will come on your merit to join clubs and play. Corruption in Nigeria is so carpeting that it permeates every facet of our lives. And because we are a shameless nation, we will not see anything wrong with scoring 0 percent in a global competition.
The next Olympics will hold in the city of Los Angeles, California in the United States of America in 2028. The time to start preparing for it is now if we want to redeem our battered image. And instead of coming back with no medals, we had better asked the Olympics organizers to introduce corruption, our national sport, as a competitive sport where we will easily pick all the gold medals, irrespective of the number of categories. After all Breaking (Break Dance) was introduced in the just concluded Olympics.
Esiere is a former journalist!
©️2024
