The encouraging performance of the Nigerian women’s national soccer team, the Super Falcons, at the ongoing Women’s Soccer World Cup taking place in Australia and New Zealand must be celebrated. While it is good to celebrate every feat achieved by the players because it is deserved, it is important to moderate the revelries. The players may have impressed all Nigerians but we must keep in mind the achievements were accomplished with pain, blood, sweat, agony, and righteous anger.
When sportsmen and women excel, they expect to be decorated, venerated, commended, recognised, and rewarded by their home governments. Unfortunately for the Super Falcons, the Nigerian government has shown little respect for, or recognition of, the players. Prior to their achievements in Australia, the Super Falcons went to hell and back.
The Super Falcons might hold an impressive record in Africa but all those victories came at a cost. They were achieved with a high degree of discomfort. In and outside Nigeria, the Super Falcons experienced hardships and mistreatment, including deprivation of salaries and entitlements, delayed or lack of training opportunities, interferences in the selection of players, persisting scandals, and enduring cases of allowances owed to the players. It is against this depressing background that we must evaluate the performance of the Super Falcons at the current Women’s Soccer World Cup.
At the end of Nigeria’s match against Australia, a match Nigeria won 3-2, the Super Falcons’ coach Randy Waldrum said calmly about the Super Falcons’ performance: “I’m so proud of these players because so many people didn’t believe. So many people didn’t believe in me, and didn’t believe in the team. The one thing we had done is we talked about believing in each other, and strength of our success is going to be about the unity in the team. To think we’ve come here and got two results out of two top teams in the world says a lot not about our ability, but also our heart and competitive desire that the team has.”
Randy Waldrum was right. While many Nigerians doubted the ability of the Super Falcons to overwhelm their opponents and progress through the group stages of the competition, the coach held up to the undeniable strength, uncommon confidence, courage, and the players’ belief in the ability of the team to emerge triumphant. Confidence and self-belief can make a team move mountains. In Australia, the Super Falcons found the energy to prove everyone wrong.
As Nigerians celebrate the Super Falcons, we must not forget the hard road travelled by the team, the hardships, the astonishing pain, the disappointments, the duplicity, the crooked behaviour of officials, those acts of treachery and double standards the team suffered in the hands of corrupt and narcissistic Nigerian government officials and other sports officials who were expected to provide them with all the resources – human and financial – they needed during the World Cup.
The history of sports development in Nigeria is a chequered and unpleasant one, interrupted by scandals of extraordinary proportions. It is a tale of officials embezzling allowances, officials threatening and harassing sports representatives, and insisting their unjustified choice of players must prevail.
Any analysis of the performance of Nigerian sports representatives at international events must explore the historical roots of the problems, starting with disinterested officials. Nigerian sports officials are hard of hearing. They are impervious to reason. They are allergic to criticism and advice. The unimpressive performance by our sportsmen and sportswomen must also be traced to government’s nonchalant attitude to sports development.
No one seems to believe that Nigeria could earn international respect through achievements in sports. No one in the sports ministry seems to be aware that there is a logical link between excellence in sports and economic development. Sport administrators behave like the three monkeys – they prefer to see nothing, hear nothing, and say nothing. Sports administrators have an uncanny capacity for the weird – that is, the ability to engage in pipedreams.
One of the key problems that undermines the performance of sports representatives is the lack of preparedness ahead of any major international competition. The administrators are unconcerned. They are casual in their approach to sports development. They do not motivate or encourage anyone. Sports administrators prefer a last-minute fire-fighting approach to early preparation for major international competitions.
At major regional or global sporting events, Nigerian sports representatives regularly engage in trading recriminations about who failed to do what, when, where, and why. At the end of the competition, the administrators refuse to evaluate the behaviour and performance of sportsmen and women, including those of the sports administrators. Without proper assessment, bureaucrats in the sports ministry and in the National Sports Commission find it difficult to see value in identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the sportsmen, women, and officials.
Allegations of sabotage, non-payment of allowances by officials, late arrival at the training camp, lack of training and training facilities, lack of commitment, and unacceptable conduct by officials have become the official lyrics of the Nigerian camp in any international sporting event. At the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne in 2006, this signature tune was played again in the Nigerian camp. You would expect that failure in one sporting event would motivate the sportsmen and women to aspire to the peak of their abilities. Nigerian sports administrators and officials are not, in every sense of the word, like a good wine that improves its flavour with age.
We must point out, however, that it is not only Nigeria that has consistently been disappointed with the performance of its sportsmen and women in international events. At the end of the 2016 Commonwealth Games in India, a disillusioned United Kingdom athletics performance director Dave Collins was reported on the BBC website to have warned British athletes that they risked losing their free funding if they failed to perform to the expectations of the public. He said: “Athletes will not be permitted to operate in a comfort zone and we do not fund mediocrity…We now have a system that sets targets that need to be achieved by any athlete fortunate to be in receipt of public funding.”
If there’s going to be commitment and accountability in Nigerian sports, the administrators and sports officials must be compelled to demonstrate accountability and responsibility in the management of sports. Funding and sponsorships are like any other investment. Sponsors in the public or private sector expect good results. Anything less is a waste of resources. Additionally, the federal government must raise the amount of money it provides for training of sportsmen and women. This giant African elephant has slept for so long that it must now be roused from slumber.