NIGERIAN SPORTS REDEMPTION MUST START FROM THE GRASSROOTS

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The trashing that the Nigerian basketball team received from the US team has led to a lot of talk and blame game on the state of Nigerian Sports and the abysmal showing of the country so far at the current Olympics. Clearly the Nigerian team had no chance against the Americans and it would have been affectation for anyone to genuinely expect a Nigerian victory. Given the circumstances of our team and the fact that Nigerian is not a traditional basketball country, one can forgive the loss but not the lopsidedness. While eminently superior to the Nigerian team, one must wonder why the US team chose the game with Nigeria to go for all the records in the books. Why could they not pick on another country, but that is not the point of this article.

Most commentators have blamed the overall failures so far on lack of preparation for this competition, funds not being released for the athletes on time etc, continuing the typical Nigerians fire brigade solution to problems. While we are lamenting our loss in the basketball game, a sport most Nigerians really do not understand or care to understand, we should be lamenting the fact that we did not even qualify in our power house sports of soccer in either the men or women categories. What happened to those other sports where we always made good showing, even if we did not medal. What happened to our track and field, boxing and weightlifting athletes. It seems all these sports have disappeared and or fast disappearing from the psyche of Nigerians.

Our failure goes beyond not preparing for the London games. It goes as far as not preparing for the last more than 20 years. We cannot begin to prepare athletes four years to the game, when we do not have the system in place to discover and train our athletes from youth. Olympic level competition takes time to train for. It takes years and years of hard work from youth. Majority of the athletes from the serious contenders have been training in their sports from when they were as young as five years old. These countries have well run youth clubs where potentials can be spotted early in life and then put on a structured path to greatness.

I remember as a young man the stiffness of the competition fondly known as inter house sports. Our youth sports was very visible, even if not technically perfect. There was pride in the competition and the athletes took them very seriously. Even at primary school level, there was impactful athletic competition. In our traditional sports, soccer, boys as young as 10 years old competed fiercely on behalf of their school. This translated into the competition in the secondary schools and then the NUGA games and the National Sports festival. States took pride in and competed seriously at the National Sports festival. It was like our mini Olympics if you may.


Most of the people that became acclaimed Nigerian Athletes went through this very important farm system. They did not just wake up and begin to train for the Olympics. Unfortunately that farm system is gone. Sports at the primary school level is non existent, is tepid at secondary school level and barely hanging on at the tertiary level. When the trailblazers like Chid Imoh, Innocent Egbunike, Peter Konyegwashie, Udoh Bassey were reaching for great heights we did not look inwards to see that we did not have a system in place to replace them. The first step in restoring any glory in Nigerian Sports is to go back to these youth programs and begin to train our athletes to compete at the top level years and years ahead of the competition. Given our regular approach, we will begin “training” for Brazil 2016, without addressing the real ill of the system. To avoid recurring embarrassment and heart ache, it might be necessary for Nigeria to stay away from the competition in 2016 and 2020 and give us time to redevelop our grassroots program.

In addition to developing the athletes from youth, we must begin to take better care of our athletes. Most of the athletes representing Nigeria at the games, self developed themselves without support or encouragement from the government or private sponsors. Nigeria is blessed with natural talents that just need grooming, assurance and some financial stability.

Each time the athletes line up, one sees a typical Nigerian name on the list except that the athlete is competing for another country, not Nigeria. And they are not just competing, they are competing at a very high level and bettering the ones competing for Nigeria. The reason, of course, is not far fetched. The other countries covet the talented Nigerian athletes, give them the right environment to train and improve themselves, create a good insurance scheme to take care of them in the event of injuries and have the backing of private sponsorship for the athletes both during active competing life and after retirement. The money spent on our over bloated contingent of non competing officials can be put to better use in providing stipends to our athletes while they are training for the Olympics, so they can devote all their time to training rather than splitting it between training and earning a living at the same time. This task is not limited to the government, but our private companies in Nigeria must take a stake in sponsoring these athletes, who can truly be the face of their products. I have been looking strenuously to see the logo of any Nigerian company on the outfit of the Nigerian athletes but have failed to find one as of yet.

We can be a great sporting nation, but to do so, we must address the issue from the grassroots rather than putting a bandage over a festering wound.


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