THE 2020 Tokyo Olympics has come and gone but Nigeria will carry its scars for a long time to come. While Nigerians lament that the country could have harvested more than a mere bronze and silver medals from the sports fiesta, a motley of other manifestations from the quadrennial event pointed at the severity of the institutional ailments that afflict Nigeria and everything Nigerian. The scars were multi-dimensional. On the eve of the Olympics, 10 Nigerian track and field athletes got disqualified by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) on account of their failure to sail through Out-of-Competition (OCT) Olympics requirements. The unit’s conclusion was that doping risk by Nigerian athletes was so high that its representatives had to be given “at least three no-notice out-of-competition tests (urine and blood) conducted no less than three weeks apart in the 10 months leading up to a major event.”
Tokyo was to bring more woes Nigeria’s way. Blessing Okagbare, long jump silver medalist in the Beijing 2008 Olympics and the athlete who finished first in the heat of the 2020 games, was disqualified for failing a drug test. Okagbare, who qualified by coming 11.05 seconds in the women’s 100 meters semi-final race, had tested positive for human growth hormone on July 19. This drastically dipped the country’s chances of getting a medal in the sprint event. On the heels of this disqualification came the Samsung S20+ 5G souvenir scandal in which the Nigerian contingent was mired. Some officials of the Nigeria Olympics Committee (NOC) were said to have refused to hand over the phones that were due to the disqualified athletes. The issue cast Nigeria in bad light at the sports fiesta.
Then there was the story of Nigeria’s standard-bearer and captain, Aruna Quadri, who also took to his Instagram page to accuse the team officials of cheating athletes. Though he later deleted the post, Quadri called on the Minister of Youth and Sports, Mr. Sunday Dare, to quickly take action, so that the events would not “spoil all the good things you have been doing.” Quadri further linked his inability to rekindle his Rio 2016 performance to the refusal to approve the trip of his proven coach to the games. Then, the sports wear donned by the athletes at the fiesta also degenerated into a scandal. At about the time that Nigerian men’s shot put finalist, Chukwuebuka Enekwechi, posted on Instagram, a lamentable video of himself washing his jersey in preparation for the shot put final, with the post, “When you qualify for Olympic Finals, but you have only one jersey,” the protracted leadership crisis in the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) came into the open. Brickbats over how a country could be so dragged through the mud began to fly around. This had not subsided when German sports wears giant, Puma, released a statement prematurely ending the four-year deal it signed with the AFN, alleging breach of contract.
Before then, the Ministry of Youth and Sports under the Mr. Dare’s headship had been locked in a battle with the AFN over a $2.7 million kits sponsorship. The Shehu Gusau-led AFN presidency was said to have entered into a contract with Puma at Doha in 2019, which led to a string of controversies. Gusau, alongside Sunday Adeleye, Technical Director of the body, were subsequently dragged to court by the Nigeria Police Force for allegedly diverting the sum of $75,000. Even before their departure for the Olympics, the Dare-led ministry had said that Nigerian athletes would not don the kits, as doing so would amount to meddling in “a subject of a criminal investigation”; and, again, that it was not privy to the contract. Nigeria was subsequently subjected to ridicule as players came to the field of play with multiple kit brands. While allegations of the kits deal money being paid into personal accounts raged, the cancellation of the contract by Puma also meant the extinguishing of all that came with it. These were the supply of Nigerian athletics team’s monetary rewards upon donning Puma sportswear at medal presentations in the Olympic games and ancillary rewards like giving gold medalists $15,000, silver medalists $5,000 and bronze medalists $3,000 each.
While the minister claimed that the ministry was not officially aware of the kits contract and that there was suspected fraud in the contract, he and the sports ministry have been panned by Nigerians over the scandal. The question being asked is, did the minister and his ministry just get wind of the contract? Having been in the saddle for two years before the Olympics, Dare could have straightened out the issues involved in such a way that the country would not be put to shame. Head or tail, the strings of scandals which rocked the Olympics contigent could be put down to the failure of leadership by the minister and his intransigence over the kits deal. Pray, wasn’t the Olympics postponed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic? So if the minister saw fraud, why not act before now?
Blame for the strings of disgrace that Nigeria suffered at the Olympics must be laid at the feet of a sports ministry plagued by leadership squabbles and the absence of headship that could inspire confidence and, consequently, performance. In saner climes, any leadership that brings shame of such magnitude to a country does not continue in office.
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