SO much is happening in the field of sports across the globe with Nigeria winning laurels using two (Favour Ofili and Tima Godbless who competed in the 100 metres race for girls at the ongoing World Athletic U-20 Championships holding in Kenya) of the ten athletes alleged to have failed dope tests, hence were banned from the Tokyo Olympic Games. Ofili and Godbless are in Kenya competing in a World Athletics sanctioned competition. Were they truly banned for drug-related offences? The long knives of critics reigned supreme without interrogating the circumstances stated by the letter stopping them from participating in the games. Rather than blame the ineffective Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN), the armchair club members chose to attack the sports minister, with many calling for his sack.

The lesson from this unfortunate incident is that both the athletes and the federation’s members should make it a point of duty to know the rules of their sport. The federations must allow their sub-committees to function. Had the AFN a functional medical committee, the members ought to have known those who have undergone the Out of Competition Test (OCT) and those who haven’t. That way, the technical committee would be effectively guided when picking athletes to be invited for trials. The AFN in conjunction with the federation’s medical team ought to have done due diligence on the athletes selected to represent the country to know those eligible and those who aren’t.

Now that our athletes are winning in Kenya under a newly elected AFN board, shouldn’t these critics praise the sports minister in the satanic manner in which they pilloried him when things weren’t going well in Tokyo? In Nigeria, we vent our spleen on the wrong people to settle cheap points. Even those who in previous AFN board turned experts as if they were better. Well, the minister must take the jabs on his chin. He must right the wrongs of our sports before he leaves office. I really don’t like the probe mentality we have imbibed when we know where the shoe pinches. The minister should insist on world-class standards, not half bakes in our sports administration no matter whose ox is gored.

The current AFN board should ensure that these new kids on the bloc are monitored, retrained, and given the best treatment in terms of their welfare packages, training grants, and those things others do to motivate their fresh kids on the tracks. The next Olympics is in Paris in 2024, meaning the federation has barely two years to institute programmes that make the kids winners again at the Olympics in the proverbial city in France which anyone sees and dies. Good to know that something can come out of Nigeria that is good for the world to celebrate. I cherish listening to Nigeria’s anthem is sung at victory ceremonies. It has always been my best moment outside this country covering sporting events.

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The Olympians returned to the country deservedly to a warm reception in Abuja donning a silver medal and a bronze medal. Curiously, our physically challenged athletes (I hate tagging them disabled. God forbid) because there is joy in disability. Our flag bearers at the Tokyo Paralympics feel that they shouldn’t be pitied but treated like the rest of us. I share in this position and wish that Sunday Dare lists them for national Awards at the appropriate time. Our physically challenged athletes at the Paralympics are serial world record holders, which means that they are not just the best, but ones the athletes from the rest of the world must beat to make podium appearances.

According to Team Nigeria Paralympics Captain, Lucy Ejike, “We have been training seriously to make sure we meet up with the standard we set at previous games. Everything is going on well. We are confident we will bring glory to Nigeria. We  have world records, so we hope to maintain the records and create new ones.”

Para Powerlifter, Nnamdi Innocent stated too that:” We are grateful to the Minister for his support and encouragement.  What he did for us during the lockdown will motivate us to excel in Tokyo. We have many world records and our target is to go there and make Nigeria proud”.

My pain for these physically challenged athletes is that previous governments have used and dumped them. I feel a tinge of pain seeing some of them at the National Stadium, Surulere running things at the Stadium via Barracks and Ojuelegba Roads’ parks. World champions who others cherish left to do menial jobs, only to be remembered four years or two years later when there is an Olympics or any international meet. My challenge to the sports minister is to ask the federation chieftains of the physically challenged athletes where their training grounds and equipment are? The minister must insist on seeing their games field where their train. The minister would be shocked to meet rustic facilities which are now obsolete.  The time to treat our physically challenged athletes like others is now, dear Sunday Dare.

The Paralympics stars deserve befitting facilitates to keep them busy. This way, the sport could discover new physically challenged Nigerians, especially the young men and women who are stationed on streets notorious for traffic gridlocks in Lagos and other parts of the country. We would do a lot to the game’s development if the government could recruit coaches in this specialised sport through bilateral relations with Nigeria to fast track their employment. Paris 2024 Olympics is just two years away. It would be a travesty if these gold medallists and world record beakers are allowed to return to the motor parks as touts and Danfo bus drivers. Such things only happen in Nigeria. The time to stop such inglorious acts is now. A documentary on how Paralympics’ world record holders are left to do the menial jobs when other countries create employment for theirs would be a monumental embarrassment for the government and followers of the sports.

Winning laurels at big events is a project structured on workable models used by renowned sports polities. In fact, most of these models are anchored on sports institutes which train the coaches and sports managers. It also provides systems which are adopted by these countries’ teams during competitions. It is the reason we see certain countries play the same way with a few adjustment informed by how the opposition plays.

Countries such as Australia, America, Britain and recently Jamaica have models which developing countries like ours can adopt, if we truly want to make the industry the business that it is in other climes. Our administrators made so much noise about adopting the Australia model after the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. They were particularly fascinated by the feats achieved by the Australians. Several visits were made to Sydney to study the system. Some Australians came here. Our administrators raised hopes that the National Sports Institute (NIS) will be redesigned with the Australian model in mind. It never happened, largely because of the policy summersaults.

A blueprint is sacrosanct for sports to thrive and it must be anchored on the dire need to resuscitate moribund grassroots competitions that engaged the youths, take them away from the vices of society.

The emergence of a sports policy endorsed by the government will create jobs such that this industry could in the next 10 years become the highest employer of labour.

The policy should challenge local government chairmen to build at least four mini-sports centres that would serve as playgrounds for their constituents in the absence of such structures in the schools in the 774 local government areas.

Sports federations

The beauty about sporting events is that there are markers to determine the winners quite distinct from the losers. This index rings so true with the performance charts of the sporting federations in the country. Those Olympic Games regulars in the past for Nigeria such as boxing should quietly walk away. Those federations where members have served more than two terms should bow out. they cannot offer anything different from what they have exhibited in the last four years.

The diabolical way in which some people remain in the federations simply because they are members of their international federations is unacceptable. They were able to contest for such positions because Nigeria made them members of her federations where they sought and won elections. Sports cannot be lying prostrate while those who volunteered to revive the industry sit-tight in the place on the altar of being international federations’ officials.

If the athletes aren’t competing for laurels in sports, there can’t be officials. So, if the officials have outlived their usefulness by failing to discover, nurture and expose our athletes to represent Nigeria in big competitions, they should go.