Olympic Gold medals…With world record lift

Ivory

That Nigeria has recorded two gold medals in the paralympics should no more be news. That when you go for championships like this, no one asks you ‘how did you win’ but you are asked is, ‘did you win?’

Nigeria’s Yakubu Adesokan twice broke his own world record as he romped to powerlifting gold at the London 2012 Paralympic Games while female weight lifter, Ivory Nwokorie, got the second gold in the 44kg class.

Naturally, I have been seen from a distance by many people in Nigerian sport as a bonafide renegade. Why? When all turn right, the journalist in me will go left.

I warned the nation three months before the London 2012 Olympics that from what I know of the Games, we SHALL return barren. We did.

Yakubu Adesokan

It is 11 days ago when an avuncular friend and former member of the AAAN asked me of the paralympics. I said: “like the preparation for the Olympics, the paralympians had never had it this well, in terms of off-shore training before a major event.

Sports Minister, Bolaji Abdullahi

I also added, “God may have in His infinite mercy have denied the nation through its able bodied not to win even aluminium to give respect to the paralympians.

The two gold medallists (and anyone who wins anything after) are our 2012 Olympic heroes and heroines. The hidden hero who due to the massive disgrace from the last outing is sports minister, Bolaji Abdullahi.

I remember when I said it on a local radio station that called to find out my position on the two gold medals. The reporter called me back if I did a mistake naming the minister.

I then asked: “since 1979 when I started representing Nigeria in the national teams to date, we have never had a well designed pre-Games preparation like this. We had this because the minister led the path. For this he deserves it. For this, the paralympians had the best off-shore which paid off because their individual brilliance is at play and the driving force in them is higher than the able bodied.

Applause please for these great Nigerians whose feats bring some succour to our national interest.

Please, tell Mr. President these ones deserve not only cash rewards but national honours.

Squinting backwards: The Paralympics is incredible. The public seem to be embracing the event in a way we have never seen before – open minded, and without preconceived ideas. The whole concept of the Paralympic Games is that it should be on a par with the Olympic games.

On Wednesday night, with the energy, the crowds, the volunteers, the fireworks, the noise, that really was the case. To have Stephen Hawking at the centre of it all, a genius with a truly global profile who for many symbolises what can be achieved as a disabled person, was awesome. A lot of people tweeted to say you couldn't have found anyone more appropriate to the job, and I agree.

There are 4,260 athletes competing and every single one has a story of overcoming the most adverse conditions imaginable.

And you cannot help but be inspired. These athletes train just as hard as their Olympic colleagues but on top of that they have to go through the daily rigours of dealing with their disability.

The dingy environment of their struggling daily in Lagos, Kaduna, to train brings some memories of supporting them when they violently protest against being discriminated by Nigerian officials.

Coming and going for their daily training schedules with the nerdy hustles and bustles rush into my memories. It's mind blowing.

Mismanaged $100,000, wasted N50m, wants N15m more

Ndanusa...failed in the NOC again

*Can’t pay staffers for four months!

My investigations have revealed that the Nigeria Olympic Committee (NOC) got the sum of N50m from the National Sports Commission (NSC) without letting the NSC know that they got a $100,000 grant from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to prepare the nation’s athletes for the London 2012 Games.

How and who got the $100,000? This is one question the NOC goons have refused to officially respond to when an e-mail was sent to them. They told their ‘friends’ that the IOC has held the money back. A new big lie. I also know that the money got into the country nine months ago and had been withdrawn from the NOC account. Let them deny and I will make more facts available.

Sources with the NOC secretariat claimed that a balance of N15m has been requested from the NSC for certain costs to be cleared. Can someone please ask how did they spent the first N50m given to them by the NSC?

Why are they so callous and self-centred that they could not pay their staffers? The staffers are being owed for four long months as if they don’t have bills to pick nor have mouths to feed in their families.

Ordinarily, the curse and pains felt by these staffers is enough to spiritually hinder whatever the nation had deserved in the Olympics assuming we had prepared well.

These are signatures of the fact that our sports institution as a whole had collapsed. It is not about the reform the minister can bring to bear. How did acute failures get to repeat terms in the sports federations. These known failures get promoted to manage the NOC. Yet, we were waiting for miracles. Miracles don’t just happen. Yet, these same people are aspiring to be returned to manage the federations for another four years. Rio is promising to be a bigger and better failure than London if these goons still smuggle their ways to the Board of the federations.

This is a sad story of a bad fortune. Some years back we had the likes of Alhaji Raheem Adejumo as President of the Nigeria Olympic Committee (NOC) who led a team of selfless Nigerians and were in the habit of funding a lot of the activities of the National Sports Commission (NSC).

Today, the NOC has almost become a parastatal of the NSC where the latter funds the activities of the former. What a sad twist of fate. The giver is now a beggar. We have an NOC that does not and cannot secure one big spender in the Organised Private Sector (OPS). They are waiting for President Goodluck Jonathan to order the members of the OPS to compulsorily drop into their pocket.

London 2012: The flip side of sad tales II

The size of women our friend frolics

While the nation could not win medals in the London Olympics, it is sad that in the Nigerian camp there was so many sordid things that happened in the background which as usual takes only days after before the details will always filter out thinly at first and later with authority.

There is a friend of ‘ours’ in the nation’s sports industry. A very loudmouth. He speaks on the honourable and dishonourable things in the industry. He suddenly became a point of focus and locus. For those of us who grew in sports, we see him as one who stumbled into sports because there is no record of his young years in sports.

Our friend was in the centre of the NFF crisis as a major player. He was involved in the Maputo crisis.  He was also in the Moroccan ‘fake’ journalist saga. He is too known to be ignored. 

He has a scandalous record of taking alcohol in the oddest hours. His most usual rendezvous is a popular hotel in the Area 11 part of Abuja with a French name. He is also easily found in a garden in the Gudu area.  

Our friend loves heavily sized daughters of Eve. There is no championship or friendly of the national football teams he doesn’t attend. Infact, where he works (as a law breaker) he is the envy of so many people who he works with because he is fond of not carrying them along.

In London, he accumulated so much money in his hotel room watching xxx-rated (oceanic coloured) films. On one of the occasions a particular lady, beautiful, bold, big, brilliant was to deliver an official task. She got in and tripped our friend libido. She was lucky to have escaped ‘forcible carnal knowledge of the cave where apples are hidden.

The matter went wild. He eventually sent out an SMS to apologise. I swear by Sango, Amadioha, Obalala, God, she would have been ‘Fryed’ like the Fulani man’s ‘kaya’ (in Hausa, load or in a Reggae man's world, hemp). Anyhow, like the Yorubas say, “gbogbo gule-gule re yo ro” (all his gra-gra go soft now).

London 2012: The flip sides of a sad story

Abdullahi...what is way out of the woods

The untold truth: Nigeria’s best outing so far at the Olympics was recorded in the United States at the Atlanta 1996 Games where the country won two gold, one silver and two bronze medals. We had started attending the Olympics in 1952 at the Helsinki Games. Of the 23 medals we had won (two gold, nine silver and 12 bronze), which one was deliberately planned and worked for as it is in other nations of the world.

There is no medal we had won that was deserved because we worked for it. Check the medals again one after the other.

Unproductive factory: Nigeria has not been developing good athletes over the years  (except in Basketball, which was why she had a reservoir of athletes that qualified us for London) despite the fact that many of them could still be found at the grassroots.

Ndanusa...failed in tennis, heads NOC

Liars, journeymen managing sports federations: The various sporting federations are peopled with journey men. Many of them don’t know the rules of the game they administer. Many lie that they are spending their personal funds to run the Federation whereas we know of one who a former athlete (Rosa Collins borrowed money at the inception. So where did he get the money he claims he’s using to fund the federation?)

Outside of basketball, Scrabble and Chess I want to be corrected which sports federations can be considered as working. These are the only three sports federations in the Nigerian firmament that was and is working. Others exist for sharing appropriated funds and attending competitions without developing the athletes. They take old women and fathers to championships meant for kids including the Maputo All African Games.

The state sports councils: This is where the athletes are supposed to be produced are all moribund and practically dead. How many of them have people you can actually call coaches? Their funding is better described does not take care more than the recurrent overheads. Mot of the governors have no single interest in sports.

Sports journalists as the problem: This is one fact many will hate to admit is that the sports journalists are the biggest other problems of sports. Many of them are worse than illiterates. How many are experts in any single sport? Very few. We have such in basketball. Here, Joe Apu, Bamidele Kayode, Pius Ayinor, Segun Ikuesan and probably a few others have and show a firm grip.

No such expertise exist even in football. Our analysis are so warped and fluid. Our reportage does not elicit mastery. Our database and expertise of athlete information is archeulian. Not too far, they are belonging to camps that can pay for their ink and thought even if what they report is not true and pedestrian.

Ekeji...will his resignation change anything?

Despite the ‘bad’ outing of Nigeria in London, how many Nigerian journalists saw and reported the ‘good’ of the Nigerian teams?

As an individual, I have my grouses about the colossal mismanagement of Blessing Okagbare. The unmanaged Regina George. The unattended ones and the absence of professionalism in the entire structure of for example the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN).

Where are the reporters who report the AFN? They were blinder than the bat. Even when some of us either by virtue of havinf ran the tracks saw and reported what we know, they will call you and urge you to join evil. Now evil has taken over and wants to sustain itself in our athletics, where are the reporters?

Did anyone saw that Blessing Okagbare with her insolence (to Nigerian journalists and the national coach, Innocent Egbunike) was untouchable and it was running in her head like cocaine?

Why did we not make headline news that she finished with a Personal and Season’s Best of 10:92 secs in the semi-finals to qualify for the finals of the 100m? Why did we not raise the alarm when her mis-managers were making her run so many unnecessary pre-Games races? We had failed on this anvil before. We need to learn how to read and write history.

The second silent but remarkable event is that of Muizat Ajoke Odumosu who ran 54.40seconds to set a new national record in the 400m hurdles.

Amaechi...Govs not interested in sports?

Patrick Ekeji: Ordinarily, we have been shocked to believe that no one resigns in Nigeria. We have also been forced to feel if a person fails a task, he should repeat the class and task. Why are people calling for Ekeji’s resignation? Will his resignation change anything in the NSC? Why are we not asking why the National Assembly (a supermarket for buying laws) not passed the Act to make the NSC a Commission? Unconfirmed sources told me and I believe when I was told the National Assembly asked for N30m before they can put the laws in place.

The NSC does not have athletes. They have not been able to effect a project to make the states effective and efficient. If we get the whole budget of Nigeria from the private sector, and the Federations are doing well, without the sports councils, we are on square one.

Assuming Ekeji leaves today, who takes over? What differences will that person bring to bear on the system? The problems are essentially fundamental, structural and has made the pyramid to sit on the sharp cone.

With a National Olympic Committee (NOC) managed by people who have roundly failed at the Federation level, what do we expect from that quarter? They collected money from the IOC for the preparation of the nation’s athletes, the monies disappeared into private pockets. May the soul of Alhaji Raheem Adejumo rest in absolute peace. Can we have such wonderful and committed people again and not hungry but jobless people who needed to survive on funds meant for sports?

Team Nigeria in Diaspora

SN	ATHLETE	NATION	EVENT	REMARKS
1	Innocent Emeghara	Switzerland	Football
2	Foluke Akinradewo	Usa	Volleyball
3	Danielle Alakija	Fiji	400m
4	Anthony Alozie	Australia	4X100m
5	Haynes Akeem	Canada	4x100m
6	Saheed Idowu	Congo	Table Tennis
7	Ayodele Ikuesan	France	4x100m
8	Oluwasegun Makinde	Canada	4x100m
9	Ezinne Okparaebo	Norway	100/200m
10	Chinyere Pigot	Suriname	Swimming
11	Oluseyi Smith	Canada	4x100m
12	Anthony Oluwafemi Olaseni Joshua	Great Britain		Gold
13	Christine Ohuruogu	Great Britain	400m, 4x400m	Silver
14	Peter Bakare	Great Britain	Volleyball
15	Ifeoma Dieke	Great Britain	Football
16	Temi Fagbenle	Great Britain	Basketball
17	Phillips Idowu	Great Britain	Triple Jump
18	Marilyn Okoro	Great Britain	4x400m
19	Lawrence Okoye	Great Britain	Discus
20	Anyika Onuora	Great Britain	100/200m
21	Andrew Osagie	Great Britain	800m
22	Abiodun Oyepitan	Great Britain	100m
23	Abdul Buhari	Great Britain	Discus
24	Anthony Ogogo	Great Britain
25	Eniola Aluko	Great Britain	Football