Another disastrous Olympics outing

Nigeria has come back from the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil empty-handed, just as it did in the London 2102 Olympics.
The disastrous outing in Brazil is a sad reflection of the state of the Nigerian state. A country that has all it takes to be a great nation but revels in plumbing the depths of mediocrity.
When Nigeria returned from the 2012 Games without a single medal, the refrain among sports administrators was that the lessons would serve the nation well going forward.
Never again was the general cry from the Nigerian public, who felt that the country, with a youth population of over 70 million, deserved better than a barren show at the world’s biggest sporting stage.
And there was good reason for the outcry. The London Olympic Games was the first competition since the 1988 games in Seoul that Nigeria would participate in without winning a single medal.
Following the uproar, then President Goodluck Jonathan convened a sports summit where all the experts pointed at poor preparation and low morale as the reasons for the shameful performance.
Four years after that battle cry, nothing has changed. No lessons have been learnt. But it was a disaster clearly foretold.
Why would a country of 170 million people continue wallowing in debilitating mediocrity?
Mariam Usman, the only female weightlifter who represented Nigeria in Rio, answers.
She says: “It is painful to come to the Olympics and see people who are your contemporaries perform better than you; not because you lack the ability but because you were not prepared like them.
“An Olympic gold medal doesn’t come cheap …. The people you have to compete with had everything they needed: training grants, competitions and are exposed to the most modern equipment. I had nothing.
“You don’t expect such people who have invested so much to lose to one who doesn’t even train adequately.”
Usman has vowed never to go for another Olympics unless things change for the better.
The question is, will things ever change for the better in Nigeria?
It is ironic that Usman admits that as disastrous as the 2012 outing in London Olympics was, she had better training then than in 2016. So, rather than getting better, things got worse between 2012 and 2016 despite the promises.
What guarantee is there that the 2020 Olympics in Japan will be better as promised by the Minister of Sports, Solomon Dalung?
To win medals at the Olympics, there must be adequate preparation. The training of athletes is the irreducible minimum requirement.
Other countries take four to eight years to prepare. For countries with tunnel vision like Nigeria, 2020 is eons away, but result-oriented ones are even looking beyond that to the 2024 games.
Nigeria’s abysmal performance is the natural consequence of inadequate preparation, poor management of athletes themselves and corruption, particularly in the Sports Ministry.
It is a national disgrace that the U-23 soccer team on a training tour in Atlanta, United States, could not be airlifted to Rio until a few hours to its opening game against Japan.
In fact, it took the benevolence of a foreign airline, Delta Airlines, to do the job on credit.
Nigerian athletes participated in the opening ceremonies wearing track suits rather than the special attires displaying our cultural elegance. This, indeed, is a new low.
Corruption siphons money voted for sporting activities into private pockets, the reason why the National Stadium, for instance, is in such a sorry state.
To win laurels at international sporting events, athletes need to be adequately trained, exposed to modern sporting facilities and encouraged. Sports is now pure science. To compete effectively one needs to be at par with competitors.
This kind of exposure and training cannot start when the athletes are already adults.
It is sad that hitherto sporting activities aimed at discovering young talents have all been abandoned. Whatever happened to all the inter-house sports and gymnastic displays we had in those days?
How many people still reflect on the National University Games (NUGA) of old and the exploits of youths in those games?
There is need for a complete overhaul of Nigeria’s sports administration. If the Muhammadu Buhari administration knows what it is doing, heads ought to roll.
This is the time to declare a state of emergency in sports and follow it through, otherwise 2020 will be another Rio 2016 Olympics just as Rio was just another London 2012 Olympics.