By Yemi Olus

The much anticipated Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia, has come and gone, with Nigeria finishing 9th on the medals table with nine Gold, nine Silver and six Bronze medals, making a total of 24 medals at the Games, having taken part in 10 sports.

As expected, there have been divided opinions with respect to Nigeria’s performance in Gold Coast. Of course there are those who feel that we fell short of the standard set at the 2014 edition of the Games in Glasgow where the country competed in seven sports: Athletics, Boxing, Shooting, Wrestling, Weightlifting, Table Tennis, and Power Lifting, and harvested a haul of 36 medals.

Nigeria’s Oluwatobiloba Amusan celebrates with flag after winning the athletics women’s 100m hurdles final during the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games at the Carrara Stadium on the Gold Coast on April 13, 2018. / AFP PHOTO /

However, the Minster of Sports Solomon Dalung believes the team delivered. According to him, “We have nine Gold, nine Silver and six Bronze medals totaling 24. We have done a comparative analysis and looked at the size of our contingent when we went to Glasgow. How many sports we competed in and how much money was voted? These are the factors which will confirm whether we have done better here or not. From the average knowledge of what I have, we have done better here than what we did in Glasgow.”

The Sports Writers Association (SWAN) disagreed with the Minister’s position in a statement released earlier in the week, stating that Team Nigeria would have done better had the athletes enjoyed adequate preparation prior to the Games. Part of their statement reads thus:

“It is unbelievable that the Minister of Youths and Sports, Solomon Dalung, could contend that our performance in Gold Coast which brought a total of 24 medals from 10 sports was better than that of Glasgow in 2014 where the country recorded 36 medals, comprising 11 Gold, 11 Silver and 14 Bronze medals from seven sports. Also, given the resources that were put into our participation at the Gold Coast Games, as well as the benefit of learning from the mistakes of the past, we should have done better than ever.”

While the back and forth continues, my main concern is the fact that one of our talented female sprinters who represented the country in Gold Coast, has decided to seek for greener pastures elsewhere and did not make the return trip with the rest of the team. News filtered in at the end of the Games, that Isoken Igbinosun was nowhere to be found at the Games village, and that she had made her way out of the facility in a bid to get a better life for herself.

Igbinosun represented Nigeria in the women’s 100m and 200m at the Games where she got to the semis in both events. She did not have a particularly good outing in Australia and certainly performed below her potential. Prior to the Games, she was the country’s No.1 female sprinter on the domestic scene and had remained unbeaten all through the 2018 season, until last month’s Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) Golden League in Abuja where she succumbed to her first defeat of the season. Igbinosun has Personal Bests of 11.37secs in the 100m and 23.33secs in the 200m respectively.

While many athletes switch allegiances in order to further their Athletics careers, sources suggest that Igbinosun’s absconding may have little to do with running for another country and more to do with making a better life for herself. As it stands, the talented sprinter may have dropped Athletics and is out to do something ‘better’ with her life. This suggests her level of disillusionment and disenchantment with the Nigerian system.

Each time a Nigerian athlete decides to don the colours of another country or gives up their participation in the sport they love because of their lack of faith in a system that has failed them over and over again, it is an indictment on the AFN as the primary authority in charge of Athletics in the country, the Ministry of Sports that oversees the activities of the AFN and of course other federations, and the country as a whole. Because if all three entities were doing their jobs and not just paying lip service with regard to the welfare of athletes and the development of the sport, there would be no reason for athletes to leave.

Usually, the dream of any athlete is to represent their country on the world stage. However, in the case of Emmanuel Bamidele, the 400m prodigy who dumped Nigeria for Qatar almost two months ago, making the Nigerian team to the Commonwealth Games wasn’t enough incentive for him to remain. He was named on the team, and the Games would have been his first global appearance for Nigeria. However, he still made his way of the Commonwealth Games camp in Abuja, to Qatar. That is what happens when people have lost faith in a system.

Of course this problem is not limited to Nigeria alone. It is being reported that at least 13 athletes from Cameroon, Uganda, Rwanda and Sierra Leone went missing in Gold Coast. Unlike Igbinosun who competed in the 100m and 200m before absconding, some of these athletes didn’t even show up for their events.

There is a saying that “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”. Our athletes will continue to leave in their numbers if we maintain the status quo!