Close to 1,000 medals have been won
in London since July 27. That is the
Olympic Games, the world’s number
one sports platform where class and
talent are displayed. Two hundred and four nations have sent over 10,000 athletes, with track and fields events having the highest of over 2000 contestants. In all the events, medals have been tabled for grabs.
Many have been grabbed. Of the
countries participating, as at yesterday, 66 had been listed in the medals table.
And Nigeria is not one of them. Nigeria is the sixth most populous country in the world. Nigeria is the sixth highest oil-producing nation in the world.
Nigeria is the 187th poorest nation.
Nigeria is among the last to pick a
medal. What it means is that Nigeria is the number one country in the whole world with the least endowment of sports talent, given its population. But in the contrary, China is the most
populous nation in the world, and USA
is about the fourth or fifth most
populous and from the medal haul,
USA is the second best. So, Nigeria is
the direct opposite of China. While
China has large population and highest pool of talented sports people, Nigeria has the largest population with the least pool of talented sports people.
That means the expedition by about 70 Nigerian contingents to London
reminds me of the popular children’s
rhyme: “pussy cat, pussy cat, where
have you been. I have been to London
to see the queen.” All the nations of
the world went to London for Olympics to win medals and register their names among great nations for good.Nigeria went there to just see the queen or her capital city. Unfortunately most of them might not have been at the opening ceremony venue where the Queen appeared. So, at last they could not even see the queen in London. So, they went to London for jamboree and to play tom-tom drums. I know you saw the picture of Ms. Evelyn Oputu, the Bank of Industry CEO playing talking drum in the Nigerian
camp.
I am sure Chief Edem Duke, Tourism
Minister and the Tourism Board CEO,
Segun Runsewe are all there to
‘showcase’ Nigeria’s shamelessness. It was scandalous reading in the papers that despite not winning any medal,Nigeria’s camp bubbles with party marketing Nigeria’s tourism potentials.And they advertised it as something very special.
I think the worst state of no shame is
where it is displayed as honour. The
party is good. But that is fraud. If they
know we were going to London for
tourism fair, then we had no need
deceiving ourselves to send athletes
and budget N2b for that. When the
world is showcasing sports and
ingenuity, we showcase tourism. Maybe at a world tourism fair somewhere,sometime, Nigeria will commence her Olympic Games and win medals competing with herself.
Kenya has the best tourism market in
Africa. South Africa and Tanzania also
have, yet they are in Olympics
showcasing sports. Way back home, we are nowhere their equals in tourism.
Development and marketing of
Nigerian tourism and Nigerian sports
are just the same – all words,
jamboree, settlements, fraud and not
action. Have you checked out our
medals list so far? They read like:
“Russian boxer salutes Ogoke’s
courage in loss. Okagbare crashes
again, Athlete Y breaks African,
Commonwealth record, but fails to
qualify, Oghene’s 400m hope dashed,
D’Tigers lose gallantly.”
You can see so many medals lined up
for us there. But are these contestants inferior? By no mean so. They are all super talents whose country doesn’t place any value on. That is why whenever they defect to other countries, they start to shine bright because it takes talent and encouragement to excel in sports as in every other competition.
By the time the athletes come back,
you will hear sordid tales of how they
competed in empty stomach, how no
doctor attended to their health
complaints, and how a certain powerful government agent absconded with their allowances. And at last nothing will come out of it. What Nigeria showed at the Olympics is the true colour of what she is – a country without regard for her image.
Otherwise why would be pass through
this same sorry track again after the
abysmal outing in Beijing four years
ago? Those that have regard for their
national identity prepare on time, place high premium on the contingents and make sure they get all the incentives to win. And win they do.
The story is that the fund for Team
Nigeria was released three days after
the games had commenced. I bet you
that of the N2b we heard was
approved, about 70 percent might
have left the approving office and
maybe 25 percent got to London.
Here at the Olympics, I have once again seen people sticking to their areas of core competence. Talk of Kenya, Ethiopia, Cuba, Jamaica, Japan etc, you can beat them in so many other areas,but in those sports they know their strength is defined, you dare not. For Nigeria, please, where is our competence? None? We go to compete with the whole world banking on ‘luck’ and the ‘will of god’ as if God created only Nigeria and devil created the rest.Olympic has shown the exact nation we operate today.
A nation that flops at home and
abroad; a nation where image matters
not; a nation where identity is no issue;a nation no citizen loves or cherishes; a nation that does not exist in the real sense of it; a nation that has made herself an object of constant ridicule and whose consciousness for honour is fast fading in the minds of the outer world. Sorry, Nigeria. That a nation they say has 160 million persons competed at the world forum and never had its anthem sang or its flag hoisted high while others cheered, is just unbearable.
President Goodluck Jonathan once took the right step to end this shame when he decided to disband the Eagles after the woeful outing two years ago in South Africa. At last he recapitulated and allowed a sports terrorist called Sepp Blatter to bully him into surrender. I think we have to go back to that option and end this reign of shame. We have fumbled for too long to have convinced everyone that we can’t do better than this.
So, let the gamble be over. But I know
nobody will take my advice among the sports ‘administrators’ who feed fat on these jamborees. As the image and reputation of Nigeria gets atrophied everyday, they grow fatter lining their pockets with booty from failed sports outings. Bombings: Successful in churches, aborted in mosques There is a faultless trend in the bombings reported and witnessed in Nigeria, especially since the bombers made the first hit on a church.
Since October last year, there have
been at least 25 successful bombing of churches in several cities in Nigeria. All of them were successful with the
exception of one where they caught
‘some Christians’ who wanted to bomb a church somewhere in Kaduna or Bauchi. The last count was in Okene.
Sixteen worshippers in church were
gunned down, just like the incident in a church inside the Bayero University,
Kano some months ago. While the
bombers and shooters carry out their
acts on churches without missing, they never succeeded in ‘bombing’ any mosque.
Some weeks after they succeeded in
killing some university dons in Kano, a certain laughable report was in the
papers that a major disaster was
averted as bombers targeting Kano
central mosque were outsmarted.
Really? Funny enough, the reports in all papers came in the same sentences.
They failed to bomb Maiduguri mosque, just as the Potiskum mosque and just a day after hitting Okene church, they still failed to ‘bomb’ Okene mosque.
Even fools should not remain fools
forever. Who generates these ‘mosque bomb’ tales to create the impression that what we see is not religious war.
Are we actually these people’s fools?
LINK:
www.sunnewsonline.com/new/opinion/we-went-to-london-to-see-the-queen/