By Danladi Bako
Sports and indeed global athletics has been the cynosure of quite a huge community of track and field aficionados in the last nine days at the Tokyo World Athletics finals. The global athletics fraternity congregates annually to celebrate new world beaters and champions.
Athletes spend a large amount of time, energy and resources to train, attracting the best coaches and utilising some of the high impact facilities in developing qualifying times for their individual events.
So many nations facilitate the upscaling and upgrading of their athletes’ mentality, physique and performance standing through investments in the training and welfare of their high profile athletes by providing grants, scholarships and appreciable reward systems.
These have been in short supply in Nigeria and indeed within the developing world where the priorities of most governments are education, health, poverty and so many other development challenges.
However, the benefits of investing in sports are unquantifiable, especially on the world global diplomatic stage, unassailable visibility and an incredible reputation unachievable in so many other areas of human existence. In the eighties and nineties, the Americans literally ruled the sprints with female 100 metres legend Florence Griffiths-Joyner and 400 metres world champion Michael Johnson. Just like America used the movies to show Americans as the world’s best, sportsmen like basketball’s Michael Jordan and boxing’s Muhammad Ali put America on the pinnacle of human capacity for endurance, determination, strategic planning and near perfect execution.
America might have the size and population above 200 million so its success can be expected; however, Jamaica, an island of 150 miles by 50 miles, has gone beyond exporting reggae’s global icons like Bob Marley and Alton Ellis to producing 100 metres legends Usain Bolt, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Marlene Ottey, thereby winning international recognition and inevitable public reckoning far beyond most African countries. Now a land-locked southern African sub-continent country, Botswana, with less than the population of Lagos State, just on Sunday won the 4 x 400 men’s relay gold at the Tokyo 2025 games, even after picking a few other medals through individual athletes Tebogo et al.
The Tokyo games have come and gone with Tobi Amusan putting Nigeria on the medals table with her 100 metres silver medal. Ajayi’s efforts in the 100 metres men’s final was also commendable.
For me, the highest point was the superhuman diminutive Kenyan Faith Kipyegon in the 1500 metres clinching gold and 5000 metres silver. Another great spectacle was the exploits of American idol Noah Lyles who anchored the last leg of the 4 x 100 metres gold-winning quartet. Lyles won the 200 metres gold as well, becoming one of the audacious and eye-catching supreme athletes of Tokyo 2025. Mention must be made of Sweden’s Armand Duplantis who broke the pole vault world record thrice in two days.
So when and how would Nigeria get to these towering heights of conquering the world? The fact is that we once had Olympic and World Athletics finalists like Innocent Egbunike (400m), Chidi Imoh (100 and 200m), Yusuf Alli (long jump) and Falilat Ogunkoya (400m), although it was the American university collegiate structure that groomed them to become world beaters with little or no input from the home government. Once in a long while, a training grant of $50,000 gets handed to them in preparation for Olympic games to pay their coaches and for utilising training facilities abroad. Even Ezekiel Nathaniel and Oyinkansola Ajayi are still beneficiaries of the American university collegiate structure.
The aforementioned names who also schooled and trained in the United States are still very much around, especially Yusuf Alli, Falilat and Mary Onyali.
The authorities need to devise the appropriate strategies to achieve podium standings in the nearest immediate future. All the products of the National Youth Games and the School Sports Federation games should be drafted into a growth enhancement programme, hire some of the best athletics coaches from around the world and ensure the construction and maintenance of high performance pitches and gymnasia. The sports federations must be populated with patriotic and passionate sportsmen who are brimming with enthusiasm, desire and creativity.
President Tinubu did not only resuscitate the National Sports Commission, he gave an unprecedented 12 billion naira to the Sports Ministry for AFCON and other tournaments earlier this year, so we have a listening President who can restore our lost glory in sports and athletics in particular. Nigeria must reclaim its podium standing capability as soon as possible.
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Danladi Bako, OON was Senior Special Assistant to former Minister of Youth and Sports as well as one-time Chairman Sokoto State Football Association
