2016 Olympics and Nigeria’s culture of underachievement – 1

If you are religious and you love Nigeria, one prayer you must pray for us as a people is that Almighty God should deliver us from a culture of underachievement. I once wrote on this page – I think over the Saraki issue – that we now seem to perpetually punch under our weights. For […]

If you are religious and you love Nigeria, one prayer you must pray for us as a people is that Almighty God should deliver us from a culture of underachievement. I once wrote on this page – I think over the Saraki issue – that we now seem to perpetually punch under our weights. For weeks or months on end, all Nigeria and Nigerians did was pursue Saraki as if once he could be caught or removed from office, all will suddenly be well with Nigeria. As much as I never knew the man and he is like any other Nigerian politician, I just didn’t join that wolf pack baying for blood. I saw that again, we were just trying to underachieve, and to use so much energy and time to achieve next to nothing. Now the Saraki case is quiet; now it is about the boys in the House of Reps and their ‘padding’ stories.  We must pray to God to give us the grace to set great ambitions that are devoid of personal bias, and to pursue such ambitions to fruition. That is what great countries do. Right now, our politicians pursue monies they will never spend, through their padding gimmicks, while we the led set tiny targets that get us nowhere.  We are only excited about personalities, not issues.
And then we carried our underachieving spirit to the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Let us ignore the snafus. Out of our approximately 79-man contingent of athletes, 18 of that is the football team, that was almost stuck in Atlanta, USA, where they had gone for training. The Minister of Sports was on air to say it wasn’t his business that the boys were there and he didn’t care how they will make it to Rio for their first match against Japan. He would later apologise conditionally. But the boys managed to wangle their way into Rio about three hours before their match and through sheer determination, they won that match against Japan, 5-4. To add to their misery before their joy, a wrong national anthem was played for the boys at the beginning of the match. I have a clip of that anthem and the reaction of the players, which the International Olympic Committee got Facebook to take down and send me a warning (because the IOC embarrassed itself).  Anyway, our footballers were confused when a wrong anthem was played and as the fake anthem drew to a close, Mikel Obi – the captain of the team shook his head slowly in a gesture that asked ‘why are we so blest/cursed?’.
What is more? Before the games started proper, a number of Nigerian athletes had taken to the internet (gofundme.com), to raise money in order to go and represent Nigeria at the Olympics. Some people will say they were seeking personal glory, and that it is not by force to represent Nigeria, but it is more than embarrassing that Nigeria showed it did not care a hoot about these young talents. There is a video clip on the internet of our 4 by 100 men’s relay team where the boys said that they had never received a call from any official in Nigeria and they found their ways to Rio on empty stomach. This is not to mention almost 10 Nigerian athletes that have been ‘commandeered’ by Bahrain (and all made to change their names in a manner that obliterates their origin at the games), plus over 200 of our sportsmen representing other countries big and small – from Norway to Portugal to St Kitts and Nevis. Nigerians are just all over the place, just like our economy. Still, Nigeria is our best bet, but we are not treating this country like we value it.
I can only add that not even the fight against corruption justifies our going out there to officially embarrass this country. Yes, the president has issued a stern warning to officials not to pack themselves to Rio in indiscriminate manner as they used to but he should be circumspect to ensure that whatever cuts they are making does not affect the real deliverables. He should care, simple. After money, there is dignity. We must rescue whatever is left of the dignity of this country even as we try to save money. If we save money and we lose dignity, and we watch this country sink lower and lower into the abyss of disrespect in the committee of nation, we would have nothing to spend that money on when we are done. It is also debatable whether we are actually saving money, or whether the new kids on the block have devised new ways of gaming the system. No one can be trusted these days; ask the members of the House of Reps.
Anyway, there are 38 different types of sports at this Olympics, and potentially 304 Gold Medals on offer, alongside other medals. Out of the 38 different types of games, Nigeria is sending athletes for about 9 or 10 of them, namely football, athletics, table tennis, weightlifting, boxing, wrestling, swimming (with one athlete after 8 years), sculling (self-sponsorship by ‘Coco’ Chierika Ukogu), short put and javelin.  Our best hope is however on football, where we are chasing one single medal with 18 athletes out of less than 80 most of whom are already dropping out. As I type this, the USA is topping the charts with 26 medals, including 8 Golds, with China following behind with 19 medals. Nigeria has exactly none. Lest I forget, at the opening ceremony, our contingent/procession was smaller than Montenegro, and their uniforms were promptly forgotten in Nigeria. They came out in embarrassing tracksuit!  Even Niger, our neighbor up north, did much better and was far more organized. They came out right in front of us.
Our 2016 Olympic showing also tells a lot of our story. Very few of the athletes are from the north of Nigeria. In fact, only four boys in the football team look like they originate from the north (Umar Sadiq, Shehu Abdullahi, Aminu Umar and Usman Mohammed).  The Olympic football team is even slightly more diverse than what we’ve seen in recent times where 95% of the team is made up of boys from the south-east. There is also a stray Mariam Usman, a lone weightlifter in her category.  I went to an Army Secondary School where we interacted with children from all over Nigeria. I am aware that young people from the north of Nigeria are great sportsmen.
People from Jos into Maiduguri are great long-distance runners.  So what happened to athletes from the north afterwards? Where did they all disappear to? I suspect it has something to do with the disunity of this country. Are the youths of Nigeria growing together or growing apart? Would they be able to pull together to protect and prosper the nation when their time comes? Some people are either too disillusioned to chip in or they just cannot be bothered. Some people have stopped feeling like they are part of Nigeria. I take the risk to point this out.  This is not a call for negative tribalism, but to remind us all that we have a country to run, a country to make great, and we must all cooperate and chip in our level best and stand up to be counted; each and every one of us.  The fight against corruption cannot sort out this problem of togetherness. More next week.