A member of Nigeria’s contingent to the Montreal 1976 Olympic Games, Dr. Godwin Obasogie, has applauded the proposed Diplomacy Wall of Fame being put together by chief Allen Onyeama, the CEO of Air Peace.
Under the Diplomacy Wall of Fame, the 1980 African of Nations (AFCON) winning team and the country’s contingent to the boycotted Montreal 1976 Olympics, will be rewarded in Lagos on July 28 according to what organisers said ‘is a reward for their selfless sacrifices to the country.’
Obasogie, former national 110m hurdle champions who was part of the Montreal 1976, said the initiator of the Wall of Fame deserves a pat on the back for the bold ingenuity.
“I thank God that I’m alive; and that after 47 years, somebody remember to reward the athletes that sacrificed their prime as a result of boycotting the 1976 Olympics,” Obasogie, the now 69-year-old US-based scholar told NationSport.“ This is something Nigeria or South Africa should have done since but we were forgotten despite the sacrifice that we paid as a result of boycotting the 1976 Olympics due to apartheid in South Africa then.”
Former Nigeria international and a member of the 1980 AFCON-winning team who was also a member of the Green Eagles to Montreal 1976, Segun Odegbami, described the Nigerian contingent to that boycotted Olympics as ‘formidable and indomitable’ based on the pedigree of the athletes that would have flown the country’s flag.
“ Going to the 1976 Olympics, I was ranked number 3 in the world in my event and I would surely have won something at that Olympics,” Obasogie continued. “But as a result of that boycott, many of the athletes lost so many things including their budding careers in sports.
“ They wanted us to go China for a competition after we boycotted the Olympics but can we equate that to competing at the Olympics? I wondered why we were not honoured like the US government did for Team USA did when they boycotted the Russia 1980 Olympics?
“Personally, I’m lucky that I’d been spotted at the 1973 All Africa Games and was given scholarship at the University of Missouri in 1975 after they read reports about my performances in the Track and Field News following our outing at the All- Africa Games. Not many of our contemporaries were that lucky.”
Yet Obasogie reckoned that the Wall of Fame is significant in many respects, adding it would challenge present and coming generation to know that their labour in putting the country’s map on the world map would not be in vain.
Speaking further, Obasogie said it is about time the country embrace development of sports from the grassroots as it was in the 1970s even as he urged the athletics coaches to go back to the hinterlands to unearth more talents.
“What Nigerian budding athletes need now is the right coaching rather than wait for America to develop our athletes for us,” he continued.“In our days, most of us were discovered from the grassroots and that is why I’ll always give kudos to late athletics coach Toblow (Tobias Igwe) who used to go to the grassroots to fish out talents including the likes of Mary Onyali and several others.
“ Of course, our sports administrators still have a long way to go. Before now. A country like Jamaica used to be behind us in athletics but what do we have now? We can’t even meet up with them.
“ For many of us in the Diaspora, we often shed tears looking at how sports have nosedived in our country? The other day when Tobi Amusan set world record , the whole country went into a frenzy.
“Yes, Amusan deserved all the accolades but we wept because we know we can produce many Amusans if the right things are done.
”One of the biggest problems in Nigeria is that politicians have taken positions that should have been reserved for technocrats
“For instance , the current World Athletics president Sebastian Coe was an athlete from our generation of athletes who were at the 1976 Montreal Olympics but do we have any athlete from our generation managing our sports today? Rather it is our politicians that usually scramble for positions once there are openings at international sporting organisations .
“ Tell me why the likes of Segun Odegbami cannot be sports minister in Nigeria? But it’s always the politicians that are always getting attention and because most of them know next to nothing about sports, it has stifled our development and growth in sports,” added Obasogie
Diplomacy Wall of Fame: Obasogie recounts pains of boycotted 1976 Olympics
