Nigeria’s woeful IAAF outing
Team Nigeria ended their campaign at the recently concluded 2017 World Athletics Championships in London without winning a medal, meaning Africa’s most populous nation has come home empty-handed from eight of the last nine tournaments. At the final of the women’s 4x400m on Sunday the quartet of Patience Okon-George, Abike Egbeniyi, Glory Nathaniel and Yinka […]
Team Nigeria ended their campaign at the recently concluded 2017 World Athletics Championships in London without winning a medal, meaning Africa’s most populous nation has come home empty-handed from eight of the last nine tournaments.
At the final of the women’s 4x400m on Sunday the quartet of Patience Okon-George, Abike Egbeniyi, Glory Nathaniel and Yinka Ajayi finished fifth behind USA, Great Britain, Poland and France. This capped another woeful performance by the country’s athletes who once upon a time were a recognizable force in global athletics. Nigerian athletes crashed out amidst stiff competition from the world’s best. The nation’s foremost athlete, Blessing Okagbare, crashed out of the women’s 100m at the semi-final stage while she finished eighth in the women’s long jump. Commonwealth gold medallist Ese Brume also failed to reach the final of the women’s long jump. In the women’s 400m, Okon-George, Ajayi and Margaret Bamgbose failed at the semi-finals. Nathaniel also got disqualified after finishing fifth in the women’s 400m hurdles.
Nigeria’s men failed to reach the semi-finals of their events after crashing out in the preliminary rounds. Nigerian champion Samson Nathaniel did not progress to the semi-finals after finishing fifth while Edose Ibadin finished sixth in the men’s 800m. Chukwuebuka Enekwechi finished 25th in the men’s shot put while African champion Tosin Oke also finished 25th in the men’s triple jump.
Sports Minister Solomon Dalung attributed the inability of Team Nigeria to register its name on the medals table to the failure to prepare for the future. According to him, “Most of our present elite athletes are fading out of the scene. No matter how long we try to mask it, it will be impossible to cheat nature. No matter how good an athlete is when he clocks 30, the law of diminishing return will start setting in. So in such a situation, a replacement plan should be embarked upon in earnest. The emergence of Cote D’Ivoire and South Africa in the 100m and 200m recently cannot be far-fetched from their grassroots programs for the future.”
Similarly, former Olympic bronze medallist Deji Aliu feels that Nigeria’s poor performance at the world championships is due to a lack of competitions, structure and incentives to motivate athletes. Indeed, Nigeria’s athletics has nose-dived monumentally over the last decade due to plethora of factors. Dilapidated facilities, dearth of competitions, lack of planning and proper execution, corruption, maladministration and lack of motivation of athletes have combined to reverse the country’s fortunes in the sport. Back in the 80s and early 90s, there were development programmes designed by the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN). They staged many competitions and devised incentives to motivate athletes. We used to have a lot of competitions from U16 to U20 to the classics. But now, there are no more competitions.
The age grade competitions are dead. Even the so called classics, we don’t even do them anymore. This has affected the development, morale and performance of athletes. As a result some athletes have gone into other sports or stopped altogether. Today, management of athletes is zero. Sponsorship derivation is also zero. Nothing is working. Of late, Nigeria has lost some of her best home-grown athletes to other countries like Bahrain due to the inability of the sports authorities to identify, nurture, groom and also create an enabling environment for the athletes to thrive.
The way out is for our sports authorities, namely Ministry of Youth and Sports and AFN to shrug off the lethargy and work out an athletics development strategy. Let’s start looking inward and see how we will improve on our grass root sports first. We need to train and develop our athletes at home by grooming talents from the primary and secondary schools and providing the necessary facilities for them to blossom. We should also replicate the Jamaicans by introducing collegiate scholarship system in Nigerian universities.