In some other countries of the world, a bronze medal at the
Olympics is not something to be talked about or celebrated. Not even silver is
satisfactory sometimes, just remember that look on Russian athlete Yulia
Efimova’s face as her arch-rival, Lilly King of the United States took the gold
in 100m women’s breastroke swimming. Nothing but gold is good enough –
afterall, the Olympics is the biggest showcase of human talent on the planet
and a demonstration of man’s capacity to express himself or herself to the
limits and excel. In the US for example, there is an obsession with gold at the
Olympics, this being an extension of the average America’s patriotism-driven
belief that the United States is the centre of the universe. The US has the largest
number of gold medals in Olympics history.
“Go for Gold” is the classic Olympics slogan, but we have
also seen in the on-going Rio Olympics, episodes after episodes and tales of
human ingenuity in addition to memorable events: so much hardwork and dedication
– Michael Phelps winning three gold medals and still counting, so far bringing
his total Olympic gold medals to a record 21, Uzbekistan’s 41-year-old Oksana
Chusovitina participating in her seventh Olympics as the oldest gymnast on
parade, and making it to the finals, 19-year old American Simon Biles putting
pure genius on display in the gymnastics, team refugees participating for the
first time in the Olympics, Kosovo winning its first Olympic medal (gold!), a
marriage proposal on the field showing love is more important than gold, well,
an Egyptian, Sara Ahmed won a trail-blazing historic bronze in weightlifting,
the mighty falling – Novak Djokovic, Serena Williams and Venus Williams
crashing out of tennis, Chris Froome coming up short in cycling, and on the
side lines, BBC female presenter, Rebecca Adlington reaching out under the
table to squeeze Mark Foster’s thigh, and on the minus side, the organisers
getting China’s flag wrong, mixing up national anthems including Nigeria’s,
complaints about living conditions at the Rio Olympics village, and on the
streets, a marvelous opening ceremony, and a generous display of Brazilian
female nudity, and on the dark side: young Brazilian hoodlums, robbing visitors
of valuables with such unpatriotic brazenness. It is less than a week, so far,
but the tales are of characteristically intriguing and historic dimensions.
But again, we must not forget this: the Olympics is about
the victory, and about national glory and pride. To win the gold, a country
must be prepared, and its athletes must be prepared to show the excellence, the
resilience and the courage that is the hallmark of the event. When the issue is
not about gold however, it is about, on the humanistic side, the kind of
courage in the face of adversity demonstrated by British athlete Derek Redmond
at the 1992 Barcelona Games, when he tore his hamstring and simply refused to
give up, reaching the finish line of the semi-finals, hanging on his father’s
shoulder. The Olympics since the first modern one in 1896, has been about the
human being and the many possibilities of human aspiration in the face of
challenge.
Nigeria has participated in the Olympics (the Summer
Olympics) 15 times, 1952-2016. And over that period, this country of over 180
million people, has been able to win 3 gold medals (Chioma Ajunwa, 1996, Dream
Team 1996 Atlanta Olympics, Men’s 4 x 400 metre relay team, 2000 Sydney
Olympics), 8 silver, and 12 bronze medals, making a total of 23 Olympic medals.
No cause for despair. After all, we are better than some 73 countries, which
have never won a single Olympic medal, countries like Somalia, Chad, Swaziland,
Oman, Palau, Benin, Belize, Cape Verde, American Samoa, Equitorial Guinea,
Central African Republic, Congo, Malawi, Mali, Palestine, Nauru, Lesotho and
Oman. My take however is that we could have done much better, if this had been
a different country, if successive governments had paid more attention to
sports as a tool for international glory and achievement.
Our poor record is the cumulative effect of the failure of
the Nigeria Olympics Committee, the lack of political will in government at all
levels to promote individual talent in sports on a sustainable basis, and the
Nigerian disease: last-minute syndrome which means everything is done at the
last minute, things that other countries spend years and resources preparing
for, we wade in at the last minute and expect that miracles would happen. Major
breakthroughs in sports in Nigeria as in everything have been either through
miracles or individual sacrifice. Our sports community, active and retired, is
made up therefore of angry and frustrated men and women who feel that they have
been used and forgotten by their country, the serving ones are so poorly
treated they even sometimes wonder why they are still wearing Nigeria’s caps.
At the Rio 2016 Olympics, there is a Lawrence Okolie and a Christine Ohuruogu
on Team Great Britain and yet another Nigerian running up and down for Italy.
Nigeria has got talent. Point.
But we do not know how to use, nurture or encourage those
talents. There are probably thousands of Michael Phelps in the Niger Delta who
can swim from creek to creek, Olympic style, but who are busy carrying guns and
looking for cheap wealth; if you go to the Mid-West, there are probably
hundreds of girls who can swim better than Lilly King, Yulia Efimova and
Katinka Hosszu put together, but all that talent is probably being wasted in a
thigh-raising whorehouse in Benin or a city in Italy, because the Ogbe stadium
is ruined and nobody has bothered about discovering the natural flying fishes
in that part of the country. When I see the Olympic gymnasts doing their thing,
I think of the many talented young girls in Nigeria, who due to lack of
opportunities are busy putting their lithe, capable sporty bodies to other
uses. Developing the sports sector does not require too much imagination: you
just need to start, catch them young, groom them, give them opportunity. That
is why a 16-year old from Chile can stand out in archery, and a 19-year-old
teenager from America, Simone Biles, can be an embodiment of human perfection.
We have the people, the potentials but…
We are most certainly not prepared for big events that
require state planning. It is particularly ironic that we have done much better
as a country in the Paralympics – 22 Gold, 11 Silver, 12 Bronze since 1992. You
can interpret that literally, I don’t want to spell it out and offend the
valiant men and women who have done us proud in that alternative Olympics.
What is painful is that Segun Toriola, seven times Nigerian
Olympian had warned us quite early that the preparation for this year’s
Olympics is the “worst Team Nigeria in Olympics history.” Underline the word,
“worst”, and it looks like he is right. Before the Olympics, we heard the
embarrassing story that Nigerian athletes going to the Olympics- 78 of them, 49
male, 29 female, participating in eight events (we seem trapped here!) had been
asked to go and fund themselves, cap in hand. To worsen matters, the Sports
Minister, the Sports Ministry and just about anyone who needed to use their
brains, started sounding like Emperors.
The Nigerian soccer team, called Dream Team VI was stranded
in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, and the Minister’s informed response was “who send
them there?” The teams trip to Brazil was postponed from Friday to Monday, to
Tuesday and to Wednesday, no money, no support. The Dream Team eventually
arrived in Brazil on the wings of charity: Delta Airlines had to airlift them
free. They arrived a few hours to their opening match, jet-lagged, without
allowances, hungry, and with a coach, Samson Siasia, who had also not been paid
for five months, and yet the boys went ahead, to beat Japan, 5-4.
That is the spirit of the Olympics. Dream Team VI, (we
really like to dream!) has since qualified for the quarter-finals, and they may
well surprise the world. No one expects that they would, maybe the Nigerian
government (which likes to reap where it has not sown), but whatever happens,
those boys and their coach are heroes already, and should they manage to win
any medal, that medal should be presented to Delta Airlines, not Nigeria, and
when that is happening, Solomon Dalung must not be anywhere near the room.
Well, they say he has apologized, but must we run Nigeria’s international
appearances on the basis of apology?
That is what we are doing. Better-focused countries are
celebrating gold medals, we are here celebrating courage in the face of
adversity: the biggest story we would probably take out of the Rio Olympics.
Besides the Dream Team VI, I have seen very enthusiastic comments about how
Segun Toriola is a seventh time Olympian in table tennis, and how Nigeria has
produced the first African to qualify for the Quarter Finals in table tennis in
the person of Aruna Quadri, and the first Nigerian rower, Chierika Ukogu.
Ms Ukogu had to sponsor herself to the Rio Olympics. She had
to beg for funds, and travelled on the wings of charity too. She qualified for
the quarter finals and got Semi-finals C/D ranking and we are now all so proud
of her, but deep in her heart, she would know that the country she promoted so
much at the Rio Olympics, does not really care for her. And that is sad. There
was also the Nigerian basketball team. They put up a valiant fight for love of
country, but I doubt if any one of them is home-made. When will Nigeria begin
to make its own athletes and geniuses, and not leave its responsibility to pure
chance and accidents?
I salute the courage of all the badly treated and frustrated
78 Nigerian athletes currently fighting for our country at the Rio Olympics.
They are patriots and they are all deserving of our appreciation for their
faith in Nigeria despite the odds, representing Nigeria, in badly sewn
track-suits. They may not win any medal- we understand! We would still be proud
of them. It is their type that reminds us that indeed, there is still a country
and for that alone, we must be grateful.
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