THE much anticipated London Olympics of July 27 and August 12, 2012 has come and gone. Nigeria sent a contingent of 116 athletes and officials. We participated in the eight sports, where we are supposed to enjoy some comparative advantage — athletics, boxing, weightlifting, wrestling, table tennis, canoeing, basketball and taekwondo.
Nigeria spent more than N2.5 billion to participate in the Games, but our athletes came back without a single medal in a competition where less fancied countries with much smaller contingents recorded resounding successes. Of the three African giants in sports — South Africa, Egypt and Nigeria — only the latter went home empty handed.
In the Beijing Games of 2008, we were able to win at least silver and two bronze medals. London Olympics was a great come-down from the 1996 Atlanta edition, where we scored two gold, silver and two bronze medals.
It is said that those who fail to plan are planning to fail. That summarises the London Olympics disaster, where all our medal hopefuls flopped.
The most evident cause of the general decline in our sports is that no president has seen the enormous potential of sports as an invaluable employer of talented youth, thriving business, tourism and projector of the image of a nation in the international arena. Sports is treated as one of those areas where politicians from favoured parts of the country are sent to enjoy federal allocation. This informs the high turnover in the number of sports ministers, most of whom have never been tested as administrators, proprietors, athletes or philanthropists.
As usual, the Federal Government has reacted to this unfortunate outing by ordering an overhaul of our sports. This is the umpteenth time this is happening. Almost every new administration has either set up panels to compose new documents for sports development or carry out "overhauls" which, rather than create impetus for positive change only worsen systemic disorientation.
We recommend a total rejig of the National Sports Commission (NSC) to make it more business-like and result-oriented. The NSC board membership should be thrown open for election for a term of four years renewable only based on performance. That way, sports administrators will be goal-oriented.
Only a democratically elected Board will create conditions to attract private participation or at least massive corporate social responsibility investment in sports. To get back to reckoning, we must start now to prepare for Rio 2016 Summer Olympics. We must remove deadwoods, put the right people on the job and give them the fund. We must find out the magic behind the surging emergence of countries like Jamaica, with which we used to rub shoulders in athletics, but which has now overshadowed the USA in the fast sprints.
Vanguard Nigeria