Moses Ugvisien, who won the bronze medal in track and field in the 4×400 meters at the Los Angeles Olympics 40 years ago, recently called three times. Two of these occurred during the Paris Olympics.
As expected, they were about Nigeria’s participation in the Olympics as a circumstantial ritual.
There are a lot of complaints. The comments are based on what we know about the medalless squad. Most of the time, our assumptions are based on assumptions, false assumptions.
Money and how you spend it won’t earn you medals. The anger over the Norwegian 12 billion spending on the Paris 2024 Games is completely misplaced. The funding approval was celebrated noisily on Thursday, July 18, 2024, just eight days before the Olympic Opening Ceremony.
Expectations were high that the approved budget would be released quickly and, more importantly, in full. I don’t know if I achieved it “quickly” or “enough”. What exactly was that money going to be used for?
Will you provide allowances? Will you pay your outstanding debt? How to motivate your athletes with 8 days left until the competition? Buy a plane ticket?
When were the funds released for Olympic training and other preparations? I don’t know. Despite the delay in disbursing the donation, we thank the President for his generosity towards sports and hope that Nigeria will do better than at the Atlanta Games 28 years ago, when Nigeria won 2 gold medals, 1 silver medal and 3 bronze medals. It is tradition to make a promise. , the best Olympics ever for Nigeria.
This doesn’t start with the 2024 Olympics. There is hardly a clear path to winning a medal at the Olympics. This will not stop at Paris 2024 unless Nigeria takes some drastic and immediate action to salvage Los Angeles 2028.
Money is not the main issue. Even if the Ministry of Sports Development receives N40 billion for 2028 today, it is not a guarantee that we will win medals. There are no structures in place to run the sport in the professional manner demanded by elite athletes charged with Olympic fees.
Limited dose capacity along the Olympic production line is jeopardizing preparations for the Los Angeles Olympics. Outright lies should not be the center of our future.
Anyone who said preparations for the 2028 Olympics had begun knew it wasn’t true. Those who are steeped in global best practices for these things will take a few weeks off to recover from the stress of the Olympics. They are organized light years ahead of the treatments prescribed in Nigeria.
They will have an evaluation meeting. They will audit and resolve post-Olympic assets: athletes, stakeholders, partners, and governance issues. Shortcomings in all areas will be improved and areas of strength will be strengthened.
The competitions from 2024 to 2032 will be diaryed, tailored to the programs of the various federations, and budgeted to the core of the programs of various competitions and qualifications that will lead to different initiatives. It will be.
Also read: Nigeria’s Olympic failure: talent drain and other emerging issues
Some talented athletes retired after the Paris 2024 Games. A successor must be selected from among the players who are ranked lower than the departing player. We must prepare for injuries, aging, loss of interest, challenges to doping, and grading athletes based on their performance for training grants, compensation, etc.
The 2028 athlete pool will consist of athletes who have participated in top events such as the Olympics, World Championships, Commonwealth Games, and All-Africa Games, and who have consistently achieved results that are within the top 15 when benchmarked against athletes from around the world in their respective events. It must consist of . First. They need to advance to the top eight and then the top six before the Olympics.
The criteria for the set immediately below the top group is listed. They will be in the top group in 2028, but are already part of the Olympic team for 2032 and beyond.
The Olympics are not a circumstantial ceremony that can be accomplished in four-year cycles with cinematic statements like, “We’re getting ready for Los Angeles.”
Nigerian sports officials will spend the remainder of 2024 and 2025 fighting for positions in sports federations. Those are serious opportunities to step into the opportunities that sport creates. We call it an election. These are essential meal tickets for most officials who know little about their sport other than perhaps their next trip and what allowances to bring.
Once the elections are over, we will have lost time, divided what little unity the Federation has, and will face the next Games worse-run than the Paris Games, which produced no medals.
Elsewhere, most federations have elected federations by Paris 2024, including national Olympic committees. The end of the Olympics means a new beginning, even if the officials are re-elected.
Back on the phone with Ugvisien, he joked about the $12,000 scholarship he owes since his stunning 4×400-meter relay victory that brought the crowd to its feet at Kasarani Stadium outside Nairobi. . It is the same as the 1987 All African Games. Remarkably, Nigeria won all the track and field relay events held in Nairobi.
An innocent Egbunike won the 400 meters with a new meet record time of 44.23 seconds. Kenyan David Kitulu came second and Ugvisien third.
Also read: Nigeria and the symbolism of the Paris Olympics
Kitulu faced Egbunike in the final race of the relay. He indulged Kittur, who led the race. Kenyans were screaming. With 300 meters to go, Egbunike began to close in and overtook Kitulu to take the gold medal.
“This innocent person is not innocent,” Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi told Egbunike at the medal ceremony. At that time, Nigeria had many players to choose from.
A year later, Nigeria returned home from the Seoul Olympics without a medal. The most surprising thing about Seoul was that the group members’ luggage when they returned home was too large to fit on the plane. They arrived by boat almost two months after the Olympics ended.
We haven’t learned anything since then. How did he manage to win three silver medals at the Seoul Games four years later and achieve his best performance at the Atlanta Games?
The remnants of Seoul and athletes who grew up in the American school system helped. National sports programs were stronger and better funded, and the administration was better than it is now.
There is much work to be done. A National Sports Commission (NSC), protected from the ministry’s lazy bureaucracy, protected from political interference, and given stability through its implementation, will guide us in the best direction. Dew.
Perhaps a look at the Ministry’s administrative structure will show how inadequate it is for the development and management of sports. The chief executive officer of the Ministry is the Permanent Secretary. To put it simply, he is a sports enthusiast who has been thrown into the vortex of sports management. He is not excluded from the regular reshuffle of top civil servants.
He may not be able to complete his report on the Paris Olympics until he is assigned to another ministry. Ministers may be replaced as well. The process will continue.
NSC aggregates our sporting assets and manages them in a rolling plan that integrates a variety of top-class global events, culminating with the Olympic Games. We will employ staff with the skills and experience to manage the sport on a more attractive and sustainable basis.
What we are dealing with in the Foreign Office are civil servants who make sporting decisions without sufficient knowledge of what they are managing. Sports management has been marred by a lack of capacity, which in turn has led to serious mismanagement and implications for the federation, with the Nigerian Olympic Committee at the top of the sluggish arrangement.
There are no plans to collaborate with schools, clubs or communities, nor are some initiatives that could tap into the thousands of young Nigerians aspiring to become athletes in various sports. Whether they become elite athletes or not, there are plenty of opportunities to earn sports scholarships and benefit from a great education. NSC will do more than this.
Funding for sustainable provision for athletes, officials, coaches, doctors, masseuses, psychologists and other managers will amount to billions of naira provided by the National Lottery Commission, partners and sponsors. There is currently no structure in place to pay such close attention to the management and development of the sport.
We need institutions that hire people with the skill set for the development of the sport. They can manage the resources that sport generates for the benefit of the sport and the Nigerian people.
In 1996, Great Britain finished 36th in the medal standings, four places behind Nigeria’s two gold medals. This was the UK’s worst result since 1952. Not only was Prime Minister Tony Blair embarrassed, he created British Sport to distribute the resources provided by the British Lottery to sports councils, schools, clubs and community sports centers in order to continue producing athletes.
Related article: Obi condemns Nigeria national team’s failure at Paris Olympics despite investment of NOK 12 billion
Elite athletes were ranked and their training was funded. It involved a more scientific approach. British Sport did not destroy the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the UK equivalent of the Department for Sport Development.
Since then, Britain has prospered. The availability of Lottery funds has had a significant impact on the long-term planning, research and training of players and officials. Britain’s ranking for hosting the London 2012 Games was predicted to be between 6th and 8th. Sixteen years after the Atlanta disaster, Great Britain has won 29 gold medals and is third in the medal standings, with everyone including Russia in attendance.
Nigeria did not win a medal at the London Olympics.
Nigeria can rely on the Paris disaster to establish the NSC. Without the NSC, the future is full of futility and vitriol.
You can’t run a sport without someone taking responsibility. No one even asks what happened to Moses’ $12,000.
The current situation is approaching the peak of confusion.
Finally…
Critics of the number of presidential planes need to change their minds after three presidential planes were seized by a Chinese company pursuant to a Paris court order. Was the president’s three-day visit to Equatorial Guinea blocked? Have you ever wondered what would have happened if the president had been on a plane that was seized, or if he had arrived at the airport and been locked out of the plane? One of the aircraft, an Airbus, was willingly released so that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu could attend. Let’s hope the size of the Airbus doesn’t indicate the number of people traveling with the president to France.
Was the latest in Nigeria, one of the world’s top investment destinations, to enliven a $500 million investment forum with a porn video? Even if you want to continue down that path, you’ll need to do a lot of work to get closer to being the best in the world.
Our government must become more serious about honoring the terms and conditions of contracts, whether in Nigeria or with foreign organizations. Ogun State, embroiled in an $81.72 million judgment dispute with a Chinese company, will only get a fraction of that amount. Nigerians are bearing the brunt of the federal government’s implementation of an agreement that the Ogun State government does not need anyone’s permission to violate.
All those who owe money or unreimbursed commitments to the Ministry of Sports should seize the opportunity of an informal inquiry regarding Nigeria at the 2024 Olympics to tell us. Please send your evidence to (email protected) and we will publish it.
Ishiguzo is a major commentator on minor issues
