The Minister of Sports Development Senator John Owan Enoh one week into the Paris 2024 Olympics was all full of hope; not just for medals, but also for a hitch-free participation in the games that would be free of controversies.
The Paris 2024 Olympics is the minister’s first. Coming from a background, not too conversant with the demands of the sporting sector, he had hoped to start on a clean slate, using his early months as a learning curve. On resumption of office, the Cross River State-born minister told Nigerians that “it is no longer going to be business as usual.” He hardly knew the magnitude of what he was into.
If the Senator must know, the story of Nigeria’s participation in the Olympics is one of twists and turns, dotted with pockets of successes and failures. Above all, hardly had there been one Olympic Games in which Team Nigeria would not have one scandal or another, coupled with the administrative ineptitude of officials. This has become a recurring decimal.
In the 1980 Moscow Olympics, Team Nigeria was engulfed in a reported sex scandal. A Lagos-based national newspaper published a story which alleged that the country’s delegation was rocked by a sex scandal in Moscow. Although it turned out to be a hoax, that scandal did a lot of damage to the psyche of Nigerian athletes.
Hameed Adio was team Nigeria captain to the Moscow 1980 Olympics held in Russia. He told www.aclsports.com that the story was not true but it had a negative impact on athletes’ concentration, training and mental toughness during the Olympics. Nigeria returned empty-handed.
Fast forward to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Team Nigeria was again distracted by so many scandals. The failure of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria to properly guide Nigerian athletes on doping regulations led to the disqualification of ten athletes of Team Nigeria. The athletes were disqualified from competing after they failed to undergo mandatory out-of-competition tests before the global sports fiesta.
Events at the Tokyo Games snowballed into the hunting down and subsequent ban on Blessing Okagbare, Divine Oduduru and lately Grace Nwokocha by the the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) . Blessing Okagbare was handed a 10-year ban in 2022, while Divine Oduduru got a six-year ban in 2023. Grace Nwokocha was given a three-year ban for using prohibited substances.6 June 2024.
Apart from the failure to properly guide her athletes on doping regulations, the AFN and the Sports Ministry under the leadership of Sunday Dare were locked in a kitting controversy.
A picture shared by the team after the visit of the Nigerian Ambassador to Japan, Abubakar Moriki, to the team’s camp, showed many of the athletes and officials in different attires, with one of the officials in the picture wearing an Arsenal jersey. Other videos shared by Nigerian athletes in Japan also showed them in different sportswears, like Nike and Adidas.
This came to the fore when Nigeria’s shot putter, Chukwuebuka Enekwechi, washed the lone jersey issued to him by the Nigerian officials ahead of his final game at the Olympics.
This drew a social media rant which described the video as the “latest embarrassment from Team Nigeria Tokyo2020 drama series.”
The one jersey per athlete issue was brought about by Sunday Dare’s rejection of the jerseys supplied by PUMA to the Nigerian contingent. The former Minister of Youth and Sports Development insisted that the contingent would not wear the German sportswear kits because of a leadership tussle between the AFN board lead by Ibrahim Gusau and another faction championed by the Minister, Sunday Dare.
This crisis came to a head when the German company announced the termination of the four-year deal with the AFN in a letter dated August 4, which was signed by PUMA’s Director Manuel Edlheimb. It was rumoured that Puma would sue Nigeria for breach of contract. Nobody knows what became of that case, four years after.
When Senator Owan Enoh sent forth the Team Nigeria contingent to the ongoing Paris Games, his thoughts were on how well it would end as he believed, like most Nigerians, that Team Nigeria could pull the chestnuts from the fire this time round. The likes of Tobi Amusan, Ese Brume, Favour Ofili, Blessing Oborodudu, Oduayo Adekuroye, the D’Tigress were all seen as very bright medal prospects. No Nigerian boxer had qualified for the boxing event at the Olympics since 2016. This time, three qualified. Unfortunately, one got injured while preparing for the games and he withdrew, the other got beaten in the first fight; while the third, a lady was disqualified for doping offences.
In the main, Senator Owan Enoh’s young era has not escaped from tradition. Cynthia Ogunsemilore’s drug failure and subsequent expulsion from Team Nigeria camp and the Olympic village is another scandal bound to leave a huge impact on the Nigerian contingent.
As if that is not enough, the mishandling of Favour Ofili’s omission from the 100 mtrs race has raised a lot of questions. The affected athlete cried blue murder as she had trained and conditioned herself to participate in the race having qualified.
Ofili won the Nigerian national title in June with a time of 11.06 seconds . Her personal best time of 10.93 may have probably put her in the final of the event at the Olympics. She will, however, be available for the 200 metres 1×400 mtetres relay.
A senior colleague, Onochie Anibeze believes the exclusion of Ofili from the 100 meters dash could have been deliberate by an official. “He could have done that for the good of the athlete,” he reasoned, adding, “she is expected to concentrate on 200 meters which is her speciality and the relays,” Onochie guessed.
Even at that, he was of the opinion that “if it is as I think, the said official should have done that with her consent. She should have been consulted and guided. Not telling her before now makes it bad.” But Anibeze did not also rule out an oversight, a complete error on the side of the officials.
After one week of competition, Nigeria no longer has any stake in boxing, badminton, women’s football, swimming, among others. The minister must be realising the cleansing he has to champion in Nigerian sports.
