The 2023 presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Mr Peter Obi, has called on the federal government to investigate what he termed the ‘rascalities of leaders’ that always rob Nigeria of golden opportunities to make a positive change.
Obi was reacting to the poor outing of the Nigerian team in the ongoing Paris Olympics 2024. He complained about the attitude of Nigerian sporting authorities, noting that their gross misconduct should be checked.
According to him: “Now that the Paris Olympics 2024 has officially ended and our dear Team Nigeria, despite the huge financial investment made into the project, is returning without a single medal, let me unreservedly register my displeasure with the performance of our team and their handlers.
The rascality and recklessness that has continued to characterise leadership in our nation in nearly every department. The general impression that has come to stick is the one that portrays our country as a joke, even on the international stage.
How can one explain that a country like Jamaica spent less than 5% of what we spent on our contingents for the Paris Olympics 2024 and won as many as 6 medals. Yet with our huge financial investments and large contingent, we could not win even a single medal?
At least nine African countries won gold but the giant with over 200m people came home without even a bronze! We invested about N12 billion in this year’ s Olympics, which is almost twice the amount budgeted for the entire Ministry of Science and Technology for this year.
This is over N136 million (about $85,000) spent on each of the 88 Nigerian contingents to the Olympics, and no single medal was won while Jamaica, a nation which spent far less than we did, a total of about $2300 on each contingent, won 6 medals; 1 Gold, 3 Silver and 2 Bronze at the Olympics. We must now interrogate the relationship between this huge investment and our dismal outcome. Sad stories like this are our lot only because we have refused to embrace competence and capacity over routine and favouritism in Nigeria.
Let us consider the case of Favour Ofili, a Nigerian professional sprinter who trained for years for the 2024 Olympics, only for her name to be recklessly and wrongly removed from the list of athletes for the 100m race at the Olympics by Nigerian sporting authorities.
What explanation can anyone give about Annette Echikunwoke, a former Nigerian hammer thrower, who was frustrated by the same rascality of some Nigerian leaders, making her switch her allegiance to the United States, where she eventually won a medal in the just-completed Olympics?
These same professional athletes were denied the opportunity to represent our nation in Tokyo 2020, for similar reasons of administrative recklessness. I have it on good authority that some injured athletes, not physically fit to represent the country and not competing in the ongoing Olympics, were there in Paris receiving estacodes from our national resources. Some of the sports officials and others who have no reason to be at the Olympics were there too, living large and feeding fat on the estacodes while our nation was crashing out on every sporting event. One of our athletes, Ese Ukpeseraye, had to borrow a bicycle to compete at her sporting event!
