There are times you need a miracle to escape peril. Nigerian athletes will fancy a dose of the preternatural as they compete in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games holding between August 5 and 21 in Brazil. Ordinarily, it is difficult to win a medal in the Olympic Games. But with haphazard preparations, headlined by the late release of funds, poor training regimen and dwindling quality of personnel, the assignment becomes more daunting for our athletes.
Yet, we have only ourselves to blame for the impending implosion of Team Nigeria in Rio. Hindsight is a powerful tool to dissect the past and make amends to prevent future disaster. Four years ago, when the team returned empty-handed from the London 2012 Games, officials swore – as they do after every event – to immediately start the preparations for Rio in earnest in order to correct the lapses. As it is clear from the growing panic in the sport community, they did not. Strikingly, it was only on Tuesday that President Muhammadu Buhari ordered that the N2 billion budgeted for the Rio Games be released. This is ridiculous. It is too late to achieve anything tangible in Brazil.
Most of the 78 athletes representing the country have not engaged in any worthwhile preparations because of this. Nigeria will be represented in 10 sport disciplines, including basketball, football (both men), athletics, table tennis, boxing, weightlifting and wrestling. Media reports indicate that some of our athletes are begging for food at the National Stadium in Lagos. There have been no rigorous training camps. Yet, we want our athletes to excel against the best from other countries.
The funds Buhari has ordered to be released are a waste. They won’t achieve any purpose other than being spent on sightseeing and shopping by the Nigerian contingent in Brazil. Although the President rightly warned that the money be used strictly for athletes and officials, he must ensure that every kobo is properly accounted for after the Games. Any other person – including lawmakers and civil servants – going to Brazil must pay their way.
But for a country with so much potential, this is shameful. A former Athletics Federation of Nigeria president, Tony Urhobo, sums up the mess, saying, “There is nothing left in Nigerian track and field. There is no motivation for the coaches to work and our athletes have simply resorted to drugs to enhance their performances.” Dan Ngerem, another former AFN president, concurred. “It’s rather disheartening that athletes are funding themselves to competitions to qualify to represent Nigeria in Rio. It’s massively disappointing all-round from the standpoint of those running sports,” he affirmed.
Nigeria is notorious for late preparations, apparently because results have somehow not been so terrible. Apart from the 1988 Seoul Games, when the country failed to win any medal; a trickle came from the Barcelona ’92 Games, when Team Nigeria secured three silver and one bronze. The best outing came in Atlanta ’96, where Nigeria took its first gold medals through Chioma Ajunwa (long jump) and the soccer Dream Team; it also had one silver and three bronze medals. Medals trickled in until London 2012, where Nigeria was one of the 119 countries out of 204 that didn’t win anything.
Now, the chickens have come home to roost. All the attempts to paper over the cracks have only succeeded in widening them. Pay no attention to the false optimism of officials; the truth is that Nigeria is not prepared for Rio. Not even magic can help her. When Britain discovered it was languishing behind its peers in the Olympics, it turned things around with a massive investment in athletes. For the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, the focus is on an eight-year cycle of investment to get results by directly funding athletes to the tune of £60,000 annually per head. Along with its partners, it is investing £543 million in assistance to 1,300 athletes for the 2013 to 2017 cycle. For the Rio Games, it had secured a training camp in Belo Horinzonte (Brazil) for British athletes to acclimatise. It has set a target of 48 Olympic and 121 Paralympics medals.
Elsewhere, the United States Olympic Committee spent $81.6 million in the direct funding of the US athletes in the 2009 to 2012 cycle. It expended more than $700 million in organisation and running its three Olympic Training Centres in New York, Colorado Springs and California. Truth is, investment, planning and training are the only ways to reach the top in sport, not the current shambolic arrangement we have in Nigeria. And, ambitious countries understand this. Augie Wolf, a USOC trustee, said, “The USOC has made great strides over the last five years in increasing its direct support of athletes, but there is materially more to be done.” In Germany, the German Sport Support, an NGO, has funded 3,500 athletes to achieve their Olympic goals, spending $500 million from 1967 till date in direct financial support to athletes.
To make waves in the Olympics, Nigeria has to change. Funding is paramount. The beauty of it is that the government does not need to provide all the money. This is where transparency, which enables the private sector and philanthropists to commit their resources to the cause, becomes relevant. Nigeria successfully employed this option in 1984 when the late philanthropist, Moshood Abiola, led a Nigeria Olympic Committee benefit that raised N5 million ahead of the 1988 Seoul Games. Nigeria should return to this formula, appointing men of integrity into a charity immediately to raise funds for future Olympic Games.
Nigeria is blessed with great athletes, but their potential will remain hobbled if the current disarticulation in sport persists. Our considered view is that the Rio Games is a jamboree. But with early, well-directed and properly-funded programmes, Team Nigeria can return to global acclaim on the podium in Tokyo 2020.
