Falling from the Olympian height

An Olympian is a person who takes part or has taken part in the Olympic Games, regardless if the person wins a medal or doesn’t. Historically, being an Olympian is associated with Mount Olympus in north-eastern Greece, or with the Greek gods whose home was traditionally held to be there. This is why being eligible to participate in that renowned Olympic event means that one has displayed outstanding athletic abilities and achieved excellent results in one’s respective sport. When the person goes ahead to win medals at the Olympic games, the person is referred to as an Olympic champion. So revered are the athletes who win medals that they are regarded as sporting gods at par with the great Greek gods that inhabited Mount Olympus in Thessaly. It is always a tragedy to fall from any mountain, but it’s always catastrophic to fall from an Olympian height. So goes the story of Nigeria in the recent Olympic games in Paris, where they fielded about 88 athletes and came back with no medal. How are the mighty fallen! A nation that other nations ought to respect as gods are now being derided as trash. Who did this to us?

Time was when naira was more powerful than the dollars and pounds and was regarded as an international currency at international economic fora, today naira has become a trash that even Nigerians in Nigeria conduct their business in Nigeria in foreign currency. It will be a fair assessment to say that today Nigeria is embarking on planlessness after planlessness, error after error, misdirection after misdirection, incompetence after incompetence, and corruption after corruption.

Our Olympic outing in Paris summarised our condition in Nigeria. We had the case of an athlete who was qualified to compete in the Olympics but whose name was removed from participating in the Olympics. Till now nothing has happened. The authorities are still investigating whose duty it was to ensure that all qualified Nigerians are guaranteed their rightful place to compete in the games after the rigorous efforts at qualification. We had another athlete who was not allowed to compete at the Tokyo’s Olympic games four years ago because her name was misspelt. She changed her allegiance and competed for another country at the Paris Olympics games and won a medal.

We had a cyclist who was called up at the last moment to compete at the Paris Olympics games and had to borrow the bicycle he used to compete at the games. I have read some lame excuses that he had to borrow the bicycle at the last moment because of the urgency of the moment and because there’s a specific type of bicycle that must be used for the competition; that even if the bicycle was ordered, it will take about two months to be delivered to the athlete for use, at which time the games would have been over. It is disheartening that our leaders at times expose their incompetence openly in a bid to defend the indefensible. This excuse has shown that the sports managers knew before hand that there was a specified type of bicycle to be used for the games and this meant that even if the athlete had been training for the competition before now, he had not been training with the right bicycle used for the games. If he had been training with his own recommended correct bicycle for the games, before the games, he would just enter the competition with his bicycle and secure us a medal. Obviously, because he had not been training with the right equipment, it is expected that he will perform woefully or below his capability with a borrowed bicycle at the Olympics games. He may not have ridden on that brand of bicycle for once before entering into the competition. He who fails to plan, plans to fail. There are other cases of low morale, which affected even the more celebrated athletes who had won medals earlier in other world class competitions.

The unfortunate revelation of the games was that more native Nigerians competed for other countries and won medals for them while Nigerians that performed for Nigeria won no medals. Nobody should preach the gospel of patriotism to these helpless youths who live on borrowed times in relation to sporting activities. Olympics comes every four years and there’s no assurance that any athlete can have another opportunity to compete in the next four years. He can become too old for the sports, or become injured, or become overtaken by another more gifted athlete, or lose interest in the sports or get married and start raising a new family which may reduce the time he/she needs for the sports. These are some reasons athletes  take each chance they have at Olympics as if that’s their last. Are you telling anybody in all conscience that the female athlete whose name was omitted from the list of competitors for the Olympics games without any reason, and probably without anybody held to account for such gaffe, will hesitate to pledge allegiance to another country and wear the flag of that country to compete at the next Olympics games, if that’s what she needs to do to actualize her dream? I bet she will. The youths of this country have paid too much price for the incompetence and corruption of their leaders in this country. Any person still asking them to pay further price is simply calling for their blood.

If you define such youths fighting for their destiny as unpatriotic because they sought to compete for another country when their own country failed, neglected or refused to provide the enabling environment for them to perform, how do you describe these crop of leaders who do worse things. Nigeria is an oil producing nation with four refineries. These leaders have been collecting billions of dollars pretending they want to repair them to no avail. They intentionally left them in a state of disrepair so that they can import all the refined oil products at inflated prices. The quantity consumed and their prices are inflated. The importers enjoy monopoly and this help them build a mafia around the trade. They use the ill gotten stolen money from the stolen crude oil to build refineries outside their own country, employ foreigners to work on their foreign refineries, while the youths at home are roaming the streets unemployed. They ship our crude oil which they stole from the country to their refineries abroad and ship the refined oil back to Nigeria of which they will inflate the quantity and price at which they sell back to Nigeria and collect subsidy from Nigeria at such an inflated price.

There’s only one source that they are extorting the money from – the common man. When private individuals build their own refineries in Nigeria, they will neglect to give them crude oil to feed their refineries. They frustrate Nigerians from producing in Nigeria and import their own products from outside Nigeria in the name of easing the scarcity of those goods in Nigeria with high incentives to those imported items like removing tariffs paid on such goods.  What an unpatriotic set of leaders. They should remove the log of wood in their eyes to see clearly before trying to remove the speck in the eyes of these youths who decide to compete for another country in the event that their own country fails them.

It was not a pleasant thing for the Minister of Sports to come in and begin to give excuses for the abysmal performance of our athletes in the concluded Paris Olympic game. One excuse was that he came in a little over a year ago before the Olympics. This excuse is not tangible. I am aware of football coaches that were brought in in-between crucial matches when the former coaches were suddenly fired, they took charge and delivered for their teams. One year was more than enough for any competent person of capacity to perform. The other excuse was that most of the athletic federations had elected leadership and the Minister’s hands were tied in dealing with them decisively as the international athletic federation relates with them directly. This excuse is still untenable because the Minister and government provide the funds for the games and are the authorities the people will hold accountable for the results. As I write, I cannot boast of knowing the name of any President or leader of any of the athletic federations in Nigeria, but here I am holding the Minister and President responsible for our abysmal performance at Paris, and rightly too, because they are the ones the laws entrusted with power and money to administer the sports for them.

The solutions to our problems are clear. We must start preparing for the next Olympic games from today. We must investigate the causes of our abysmal performance and punish whoever is found wanting. The Minister must find a way to use the stick and carrot approach to compel the Federations to fall in line with his policies on sports. We should stop copying hook, line and sinker the modus operandi of foreign countries because they have strong institutions which do not have a systemic corruption problem. The elected leadership of the foreign federations work patriotically for their countries and have a litany of private rich entities to support them. Their elections are free and fair trumping up competent men of character to manage their sports activities. Nigeria does not have strong institutions and do not have free and fair elections resulting in criminals emerging as leaders of the sporting activities. The Minister must find a way to take charge to save our sporting world from international ridicule and collapse. Sports has become a quintessential agent of unity among the people and everyone must lend a helping hand to sustain its upliftment.