Olympics gold medal doesn’t come cheap

There is a Yoruba saying, which translated loosely, means  ‘when problem goes beyond tears, you laugh it off’. And so Nigerians made light of the situation when our representatives at the just-concluded  Rio Olympics Games found it difficult getting on the medals podium by joking that at least we have a gold in the musician, Adekunle Gold and a silver in the renowned actress, Joke Sylva.
But seriously, how can a whole giant of Africa feature in the Olympics four years after an embarrassing ‘medal-less’ London 2012 appearance and return home with only a ‘golden’ bronze? Forget the talk about Olympics being about participation and not winning. If that is true, Michael Phelps would have stopped swimming for gold and Usain Bolt would have given others the opportunity to also shine.
Some even joked that our medals haul would come from the Paralympics, our own Olympics.
But medal or no medal, at least  Team Nigeria kits for the Rio Olympics arrived Brazil in time before the end of the games. The kits, which athletes were supposed to have worn for the opening ceremony, were left behind at home by Nigerian officials whom, I guess, were in a hurry not to miss their flight to Brazil.
But if the kits flop was remedied, what can’t is the fact that Nigeria attended the Rio Olympics with athletes and officials representing 180 million of us, but we’ve got just a medal, a bronze to show.
For the Dream Team VI, managing to get to the finals and clinching the bronze was not a mean achievement considering the shoddy treatment that trailed their trip to Rio. The sheer determination of the players and the coaching crew who flew in to play their first match just three hours to kick off and had to pay their hotel bills made the bronze golden. Without the medal, the Rio Games would have been another jamboree.
Feeble impacts were made in the other seven sports in which Nigeria participated.
In table tennis, Aruna Quadri made it to the quarterfinals of the men’s singles event. He managed to become the first African to play in the last eight of the Olympics table tennis. It is noteworthy that Quadri is based in Belgium.
Similarly, for 23-year-old US-based Nigerian, Chierika Ukogu, the dream to win an Olympic medal in women’s rowing only saw her to the fifth position in the quarterfinals. Ukogu was Nigeria’s lone entrant in women’s rowing event. It is also worth noting that the graduate of Human Biology who took to rowing in 2006 represented Nigeria on several occasions through private sponsorship.
Our only boxer, Efe Ajagba, also failed to make it to the medal stage. Hopes raised after Ajagba knocked out his Trinidad and Tobago opponent, Nigel Paul, in the run-up to his quarterfinals fight soon fizzled out. Kazakhstan’s Ivan Dychko stopped him from going further.
Nigeria’s reigning sprinter, Okagbare, did not shine this time. Neither did the female quartet led by her clinch any medals in the 100 metres finals. With the result from Rio, there was just a little improvement on the embarrassing outing four years ago at the London Olympics. We are far from re-enacting the glorious moments of the 1996 Atlanta USA Olympics from where Team Nigeria returned home with two gold, one silver and three bronze medals.
It is sad that 20 years after, there is no new Chioma Ajunwa, the first Nigerian to win individual gold medal at the Olympics. She won gold in the long jump event.
We couldn’t replicate the Kanu Nwankwo-led team’s gold medal in men’s football.
Nigeria couldn’t produce another Falilat Ogunkoya in women’s 400 metres and 4×400 metres relay. There is also none to replace Mary Onyali-Omagbemi in Women’s 200 metres race.
And our boxers couldn’t  equal the feat of Duncan Dokiwari in men’s boxing.
Reasons for this dismal performance are not far-fetched. Poor funding, shoddy preparations, substandard and inadequate facilities, inadequate exposure and low morale.
A Nigerian weightlifter, Mariam Usman, who competed in the 75 category and finished 8th poured out her heart thus, venting the real problem with sports in Nigeria: “It is painful to come to the Olympics and see your contemporaries perform better than you, not because you lack the ability, but because you were not prepared like them.
“Olympics gold medal doesn’t come cheap. It is painful that one has to suffer and when competition comes, they expect you to win a medal with your blood.
“The people you have to compete with had everything they needed -training grants, competitions- and are exposed to the most modern equipment. I had nothing. You don’t expect such people who have invested so much to lose to one who did not train adequately.”
Former president Goodluck Jonathan organised a sports summit shortly after the London 2012 poor show. These problems and others were identified and solutions proffered. We should ask the politicians what went wrong.
And what would they say went wrong with our sports that did not go wrong with the economy, education, agriculture, roads, health and every other sector of our existence?
Was it not just recently, 30 years after, that President Muhammadu Buhari redeemed the pledge he made as military head of state to the victorious Golden Eaglets that won the maiden under-16 world trophy? What worse example of failure of governance can we have?
Now the ball is in the court of the government in power. Would Buhari watch from the stand as Nigeria continues to take the rear in international sports? While Ethiopia, Kenya and our other African folks have maintained their preeminence in their traditional sports, we, the giant of Africa, feature at tournaments and games now just to add to the number. I wish President Buhari would extend his anti-corruption crusade to sports. No doubt, corruption is killing sports here and if this government is concerned about diversifying the economy, it should consider sports as an investment, a big revenue earner, source of employment and economy booster.
Experience has shown too that almost all the sectors that governments at all levels dipped their hands in have not been profitable. Therefore, shouldn’t government encourage individuals and private organisations that can make the nation proud run our sports without the overbearing interference from government officials?
And government must begin to look at sports where we have competitive advantage and groom our youths to love and participate in them right from early childhood.
What about making sports a compulsory programme in all private and public schools to develop interest of Nigerian children in sports from early childhood? Government must address the inadequacy of lack of space and facilities for sports in most of our private schools, to improve exposure to sports.
Government must also not only provide and maintain sports grounds and recreational centres in communities across the country, but keep away hemp smokers and roughnecks who have turned such facilities in many states into their arenas.
It should be noted that quite a number of athletes who represented Nigeria at the Olympics are not home-based. Perhaps they might not have qualified in the first instance for the games, if the facilities and uninspiring home environment and officials were all they relied on.
As long as government continues to pay lip service to sports development, not only would medals and honours remain elusive, we would continue to breed youths who are cultists, kidnappers, religious fanatics and ritualists who for want of decent alternatives that the competitive games afford, dissipate their talents and energies on dangerous, inhuman and anti-social acts. Unfortunately, there are no medals for cultists and kidnappers. Not in Rio, neither will our gangster youths who specialise in killing their rivals for fun or abducting others for monetary gain get on the podium in Tokyo in 2020.