Nigeria at 10th All Africa Games and matters arising KAYODE KETEFE The tenth All Africa Games which held in Maputo, Mozambique, ended last Saturday with Nigeria emerging the third best country, after the unassailable giant, South Africa and marginal conqueror, Egypt, which claimed the first and second spot respectively. While South Africa emerged victorious with runaway 61 gold, Egypt edged out Nigeria with just one gold, bagging 32 gold to Nigeria's 31. Apart from the problem of inadequate facilities and rampant administrative hiccups that dogged the competition, one other issue which should be of concern to all lovers of sports is unconscionable manipulation of the games by the local organisers to procure some ends which are antithetical to the stated objectives of the Pan African sports. As anybody who is acquainted with the principles of sport sociology would readily agree, politics is a phenomenon that can never be divorced from sports. Politics exists at all levels of organised sports and will continue like that as long as selfishness and vanity remains a universal human failing. However, there should be a limit to which human factor should be allowed to encroach into the integrity of sporting enterprise, otherwise the noble intention behind the latter would be defeated. Shortly, before the All Africa Games, it was gathered by the keen followers of events that South Africa had prevailed on the host, Mozambique, to exclude three major events, wrestling, weightlifting and powerlifting, from the games. As the said events are Nigeria's traditional stronghold, it was obvious that the rationale behind the move is to ensure that the most populous black nation's capacity to excel is severely hampered, paving way for indomitable South Africa's triumph. Pandering to the behest of South Africa's intrigues, Mozambique, which relied heavily on South Africa's finances to provide infrastructure for the games, promptly announced the exclusion of the said events from the games. Mozambique's official reason for this excision was that it had no facilities in place to host the events! Of course, every follower of sports in Africa knew that the decision was a strategic move to incapacitate Nigeria; to obtain a roller coaster for South African ascendancy. As it turned out, the plan worked perfectly as South Africa maintained an unassailable lead from the beginning of the games till the end, winning a whopping 33 of her 61 gold from the single event of swimming. Now, suppose swimming had been excluded, too, through some manipulation, South Africa would have come third! But by this intrigues, South Africa was merely implementing a singular case of retributive justice; a case of paying Nigeria back in her own coin (forget that we no longer have coin as Kobo is now deader than dodo); it will be recalled that Nigeria played the same selfish trick when Abuja hosted the 8th AAG in 2003. Out of the desire to win at all cost, Nigeria excluded diving, among other events where the South African and Egypt were sure to sweep almost all the medals. This, combined with other "minor" manipulations ensured Nigeria emerged winners, finishing with a fantastic 85 gold medal haul. If the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa, now the Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa, ANOCA, is really serious about the integrity of the games by using it as a medium to promote fraternal bond among the African countries, then it must stop this kind of irresponsible manipulation. Of what importance is sport if the element of fair play is removed? Therefore, the extant SCSA Act which gives the host the right to select sports that will feature at the games must be amended, especially now that SCSA is being replaced by ANOCA. The amendment must make it mandatory on all the future hosts to stage all recognised and accredited sports by ANOCA. Having said the above, the next question is on the intrinsic quality of our own performances in sports. It is unfathomable for Nigeria to play second fiddle to any African nation in any sport in the light of our awesome human resources. At the AAG, we used to play a perennial second fiddle to Egypt, but now we do lag behind either Egypt or South Africa or both of them as it happened in the just concluded competition. We have the highest concentration of the black people in the world and as we all know, the blacks are genetically predisposed to excel in any enterprise requiring marvellous amount of physical energy, and with our over 150million population, we should be ruling the world in sports. Nigeria is the most populous black nation known to man! But, Sadly, we are not even the best sporting country in Africa let alone the world. The United States with just about 38 millions blacks, constituting 12.6 of her population dominates the world in sports. Even smaller countries like Jamaica have posted indelible achievements in world athletics. Jamaica has produced, among others, stars like the current world fastest man, Usain Bolt, and other superstars like Ashafa Powell and Yohan Blake. Our failure is an indictment of our sports administrators and apathetic governmental sporting policy. We owe it a duty to ourselves and the black race in general to take our rightful position in sports. Adequate planning, within the framework of strategic projections for concrete achievements in all sporting activities, must start right now. |
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