Amidst the paucity of funds for Nigerian sports, and with an attendant lack of suitable facilities and structures to enhance development and welfare of athletes, Dr. Daniel Igali, President of Nigeria Wrestling Federation (NWF), believes adoption of the Cuban model could take the country out of the woods; even as he pleads with President Bola Tinubu to make the desired intervention to lift the multi-billion industry.
Igali, who doubles as the Commissioner for Sports in Bayelsa State, said but for the impactful support of Governor Douye Diri, the NWF, for instance, would not have been able to record some of its outstanding successes under his presidency which will elapse next year.
“Poor funding of sports in Nigeria is a big issue and we urgently need to address this because it’s really affecting everybody,” Igali told journalists during the week, bemoaning the chances of the country at finishing with gold medals on the podium at the forthcoming Paris 2024 Olympics Games. “At a recent meeting with the minister, I honestly told him we cannot be expecting a lot of medals if this funding paradigm, which is not anything to go by, is sustained in Nigeria.”
Igali said Nigeria’s near-total dominance of some sports on the continent is being challenged because other African countries have stepped up funding of sports, particularly in wrestling, as he made a comparative analysis.
He explained: “Many African states, including Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, none of them has a budget less than a million dollars a year. I have been president of the Nigeria Wrestling Federation and I will be 12 years in office next year but I can tell you that I have not received one naira for development for the federation, not once, from the sports ministry.
“But what the ministry does is to fund competitions. For instance, if we are going to the African Games, Commonwealth Games or the Olympics, they will find a way to send the athletes to those competitions.
“But there is nothing the ministry does to prepare coaches, referees and development of the athletes and actually me having the pathway for success for our athletes.
“For instance, if the NWF knows that it would get $500,000 annually from the sports ministry for development, then we can readily plan our programmes right from the cadet to the senior team levels, but how do we plan if there is no funding for the development of the athletes?
“Wrestling alone has six national teams across three styles, namely Greco-Roman, freestyle, and female wrestling. And you have the cadet team, the junior team, and the senior team.
“To develop these athletes, that means we must start serious training and attending competitions from the cadet level. That means they must go to the African Championships, World Championships. The junior athletes must also go to the African Championships and the World Championships because those are the ones that you are looking at to take over from the senior athletes in two, three years.
“But since I’ve been president of NWF, our cadet athletes have only travelled twice. And one of those times was funded by the Bayelsa State. Also, it was the Bayelsa government that took three of our wrestlers to junior competition at some point.
“For instance, Odunayo Adekuoroye in 2010 had that opportunity to go to the Cadet African Championships. But that’s about it. Between 2009 and 2011, India and Nigeria were almost neck -and-neck as far as wrestling is concerned.
“But today, India and Nigeria can never be on the same page because we are not on the same level as far as funding is concerned – both from government and private sponsorships.
“Tata Motors started sponsoring India Wrestling Federation about five years ago and they have consistently been getting between $3.5 million and $5 million yearly.
“This year, the Indian cadet female team are the world champions and I was only at the competition as a technical delegate. There is no competition, junior competition, that India will not go with their full teams across Greco- Roman a, freestyle and female wrestling.
“So the moment they can sustain that over three, four, five or six years, India would start competing favourably with the rest of the world but that is the kind of sponsorship that the NWF is lacking.
“ Unfortunately, this funding problem is not limited to wrestling but it is affecting all our sports federations. So if we are going to get it right, we must have a budget that is apportioned to sporting federations as it is being done in Australia, US, Canada, Germany and other advanced countries.”
But given the endemic lack of fund within the Nigerian sporting ecosystem, Igali has now canvassed that Nigeria as a country can borrow a leaf from Cuba, where sports have become a national pastime.
“I’ve often said that we can look at what Cuba with little or no resources is doing so much, so that there is no Olympics where Cuba will not come out with less than three gold medals,” Igali, the only male to have won a wrestling gold for Canada in history, further said. “Cuba takes physical and health education as a priority in their primary schools and there is no exception unless you have a terminal illness or you are really sick or disabled.
“The moment you are in primary school you must belong to a sport and they fix them across sports after rigorous tests and examinations.
”Now, I’m looking at the possibility of getting a Cuban coach for the NWF. In fact, Cuban coaches are now all over the world and in Africa, we have almost eight Cuban coaches in different countries.”
He further explained that there is no magic in sports, rather you can predict what a country can do specifically at the Olympics, for instance, based on what the athletes have done at world championships across all sports.
“We’re going to the Olympics in four months’ time and I can say maybe, what’s her name the hurdler? Maybe Tobi Amusan is probably the country’s best hope for a medal in track and field because of what she’s has done at the world championship level? How many of our athletes can we say will win gold not to talk of a bronze at the Olympics? Whereas, the United States can tell you how many gold medals they’ll be able to win, with almost 95 percent accuracy, because it’s a process from the world championships to the Olympics.”
Meanwhile, Igali has spoken specifically on issues bothering on succession plans once his tenure is over at NWF among other sundry issues. Excerpts…
Quest for Olympic gold in wrestling
You know, I’m a life-long wrestling fanatic and fan. So whether my tenure expires next year or not, I will remain very intimately involved in wrestling and its development. As I said, that is still my goal. My goal is to ensure that we can produce an Olympic gold medallist in wrestling. And whether it happens in my time as president or not is what I will still be pursuing in and out of office as federation president. And, of course, whether I am the president of the federation or not, as a member of the International Bureau of Wrestling, I will have a lot of say in the development of wrestling in Nigeria, at least for the next four years. And so with specific reference, to your question, our goal is, first and foremost, to ensure that we win at least a medal, but the ultimate ultimately, we will be able to have one of our athletes standing on the topmost podium at the Olympics.
Stiff competitive challenge in global wrestling
To win a gold medal in wrestling is very difficult. Canada had never won a gold medal at the Olympics until Sydney 2000 when I did. From 2000 till today, not even one of the males has even wrestled for bronze at the Olympics after 2000. That goes to tell you how stiff the competition at the international level is.
You know, the competition level of wrestling is completely different from what it was in the 90s and even early 2000s now. Because in the 90s, the Soviet Union was just one country. Now there are the breakaway countries, well almost 20 from the Soviet Union. And they’re all good. So it has exposed our athletes to a lot stiffer competition. So the level of wrestling is a lot higher than it was a couple of decades ago. I think if we had more funding, if we had exposed them the way I would have ideally wanted, we would have been talking about at least one world champion. We may even have been talking about an Olympic gold medalist by now. So if I have any regrets, that is about the only regret I have, that the funding expectations didn’t meet our ambitions.
Chances for three wrestling gold medals from Paris 2024
You are not going to hear that from me. Because if we were going to win two or three gold from this Olympics, we would have won them at the World Championships last year. If we went with six female athletes and we only qualified one athlete and the basis for qualification was to be top 5. And so I had only one person who was top 5 last year. That’s the one who had the gold. So I cannot stick out my neck to tell anyone that wrestling is going to the Olympics to win gold medals. But I can tell you that if we do the right things, and the right things are ensuring that these athletes get into camp before the middle of April. Assuring that they compete for the Olympics. At least once in Nigeria and twice internationally. Ensuring that we have, when they are competing abroad, they have a cumulative camp of about a month outside the country. And making sure their welfare is good and their medical needs are met.
If we do those things, I think we will put them on a pedestal to be able to compete favourably with their opponents from the rest of the world, and potentially to be on the podium as we’ve demonstrated in the last four years.
Breeding fresh talents at NWF
You know, there are some athletes that come once in a generation. Like my type in Canada. It’s difficult to quickly replicate the successes we have had over the years if there are no sustained efforts. Blessing Oborodudu and Odunayo fall in that category. These were athletes that we took from primary school. And, within three years, they were already African champions. They were very dominant. They were competing at the world. So, it’s difficult to replicate such athletes easily. But, if you look at the national team now, out of the nine gold medals we won at the last African championships, Odunayo and Blessing, and maybe Hannah Reuben. Anna, I don’t know how long she will be in the system. But, all the others; Mercy is 26. These other girls are like 21, 22. Christiana Ogunsanya is 21, 22. Esther Kolawole is between 21 and 22. So, especially with the women, we’ve done pretty well. At the higher weight classes, in Blessing’s weight class, it’s difficult. We haven’t been able to get someone who can step in right away. But, sometimes, somebody from a lower weight class can move up and we start grooming them. It will take some years to get athletes in the mould of Blessing and Adekuoroye. But more work is needed to be done, and most of the work will be left for the person that will come and succeed me.
Exposure of athletes beyond wrestling
You know one of the things I pride myself in is the fact that 100% of the Nigerian athletes are groomed and trained in Nigeria. It is just the system, otherwise we don’t have any business anywhere else. We should have our brand of wrestling. Our brand of training. Just as Cuba. Look at North Korea, they are barred from coming to competitions. But any time they come out. They win a gold medal. They win medals at the world championships. My going to Canada exposed me. But I think the reason we performed and got to that level, is because of the genes we have. And that was one of the biggest things that propelled me to come back. If I could go there and do this. And I have this knowledge. If I go back and I impart it. So when we came back, we changed the way they eat. We changed the way they train. We changed their mentality. The biggest thing was the mentality. Once we started changing those things, they believed. And we are there. When athletes get to a certain level, they have the opportunities and that is what I tell people that no wrestler will run because they go everywhere. They go to the United States, Canada, Germany, Portugal and they go everywhere to compete. The ones that want to go to school. opportunities are there. Odunayo Adekuoroye right now is a coach in the United States. She’s an assistant coach in the university. Ashton Mutuwa is also based in the United States. But the likes of Blessing Oborodudu, Mercy Genesis, these are people who travel four, five, six times out of the country to go and compete everywhere. So we’ll go, we’ll get what we need from them and we’ll come back and we’ll impart it here. I think we just need to set up a proper system here. Already, there are four countries that want to come and train here in Bayelsa for the Olympics; once you set up the right facilities and have the personalities who can run it, you see everybody coming here.
My good time at NWF
Yes I have enjoyed my time as president of the NWF because I’ve had a very good board. I was lucky from the beginning. I was president till now. Not one query was taken to the federal ministry. At no time did the minister call any of us for any settlements. At no time have we had any serious issue even amongst ourselves. I think I may have worked well with them. And they have also worked extremely well with me. Virtually all members of the board see me as someone who understands the game, to the extent that if I say let’s go in this direction, it’s not like they just follow willy-nilly. But they trust me enough to say okay, we trust you to take us in that direction. So to that extent, we’ve not had any issues. So I did enjoy my time as Federation President. I probably may have enjoyed it more, if we had better funding. Maybe if they were even giving us 10 percent of what the United States is getting for their team, I would have produced multiple world champions and Olympic champions. Because we do have the pedigree. We have the athletes. It is just the system right now that is holding them back.
Succession plans for NWF
I think we need to have somebody as president that can follow all the ideas we have during my time. You know, the first criterion or requirement would be someone who is already in the system, who understands how women are able to work. Someone who is passionate, who has that administrative acumen. And, except they want to completely deviate from the path we are on now, someone within the system that can still keep to our tenets will be the most ideal. Someone who is passionate about the development of wrestling. I wouldn’t want a situation, necessarily, where you have to have very deep pockets. But, it comes with the terrain. You must have a president who can afford a plane ticket for an athlete to go to a competition if it is necessary. Because, most times, the federal government won’t be able to do it. But, if you think this must be the case, then it is. If it must be done, you have to do it. So, in a nutshell, I think within the board, there are a couple of people who fit the mould. But, I haven’t had those extensive conversations with them as to whether they are prepared to. But, in the next couple of months, I intend to start having conversations with some of them that I think have that capacity to be there, and be able to keep wrestling where it is. And possibly grow it in the future.
Tenure Elongation
I have put in a lot of time. I think we should have another person. It’s very tasking. I know the issues I’ve even had with my wife over being president of the federation. Because, you can’t tell your wife that your son can’t go to a soccer tournament that requires three or four thousand dollars. But, one or two of your athletes are travelling because you bought tickets for them. And, that is what this thing does to you. Because, it’s about your reputation. It’s about your legacy. So, sometimes you go all out. And, that’s why sometimes I will hear people saying, ‘Oh, you say there’s nothing there but the federation presidents are always contesting elections’. You know? It’s like a disease. You are there, you do everything and borrow money for your athletes to go to competitions maybe because you have some assurances. For instance, the camp we hosted for Blessing Oborodudu and the rest, the additional week before they will go to the Olympics, has not still been paid as I’m talking. And we won our only silver medal at that 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. But all the fund for that extra camping we used hasn’t still been paid. I’ve derived so much joy from being Federation president. Financial considerations may not necessarily be the yardsticks. I’ve probably added 10 more years to my life from the joy I have derived from my athletes doing well. So I would not necessarily say it has left a big hole in my pocket because the other intangible things have made up for it.
