By Patrick Omorodion

The 22nd National Sports Festival tagged Gateway Games 2024 which ended on May 30, 2025 will for a long time be talked about for various reasons other than the promise by the Ogun State Government that it would host the best Games ever in the history of the event. 

It turned a bazaar for the host governor, Dapo Abiodun, who wrapped the two weeks of the event into three main phases that are not consistent with the philosophy of the founders of the Games which started in Lagos in 1973, both as a hunting ground for budding talents to represent the country at international competitions as well as a unifying platform for the country just coming out of a fratricidal war.

The first aim for Governor Abiodun was to use the opportunity of the Games to mark his 65th birthday. The event was to be hosted in 2024 but postponed twice.

This may have been part of the reason why the month of May in 2025 was chosen to host the festival.

According to an insider in the Main Organizing Committee, MOC, the governor’s birth date, May 29, was chosen as the closing ceremony and he asked that the opening ceremony should be worked backwards to get a date.

Another addition to the biennial event was that the ruling party, the All Progressives Party, APC, used it to promote the Renewed Hope Agenda of the party as well as campaign for President Bola Tinubu’s 2027 second term agenda.

Coming to the Opening Ceremony which an Ogun son, who incidentally is the accounting officer for the National Sports Commission, NSC, owners of the Games Chief Bukola Olopade touted was colourful and the best in the history of the Games, was only entertaining because of the performance of music icon, David Adeleke, popularly known as Davido who many athletes stayed back to watch.

Apart from Davido’s performance, the ceremony was a speech making event by politicians like Governor Abiodun and Vice President Kashim Shettima who represented President Tinubu. They used the occasion to highlight the performance of the APC in two years and why they should continue for another four years from 2027.

Unfortunately for these politicians, the athletes were not interested in their self adulation and left the stadium after Davido’s performance.

The main reason the athletes left though was the distance of the Games Village situated at the Babcock University at Ilishan-Remo, about an hour drive from Abeokuta. According to them, they had to leave to enable them arrive at the Games Village on time for their dinner, have enough sleep and prepare to make the long journey early enough back to Abeokuta the next day for their events.

Apart from the distance from their hostels to event venues, the athletes had to contend with heavy traffic on the Ijebu-Ode-Sagamu expressway which was under repairs as motorists were restricted to one lane of the dual carriage way.

Another sore point for the festival was the lack of facilities for sports journalists at the media centre to report events. Everything promised by the host, from computers to Internet facilities to do their job seamlessly were never provided.

To add salt to the injury, organizers gave journalists a deadline of 8pm to vacate the media centre every day when some events lasted up till 10 or 11 pm sometimes. At major competitions around the world, media centres are usually open for 24 hours to enable journalists to work round the clock considering the different time zones around the world.

Ogun State also set a record of being the first host in recent history to have her athletes disrupt the Festival by barricading the gate leading in and out of the Games Village situated at the Babcock University over unpaid allowances.

Several events expected to hold on Wednesday May 27 had to be postponed to the next day set aside for the closing ceremony which coincided with the birthday of Governor Abiodun.

The protest which took the government by surprise saw officials of the State singing discordant tunes. The State Commissioner for Sports, Hon. Wasiu Isiaka, denied there was any protest, saying”the athletes discontent was misconstrued as protest”, adding that the incident was not connected to the athletes’ unpaid allowances but rather technical challenges with disbursing payments to athletes using non-commercial bank accounts.

The commissioner’s position was made nonsense of by the Special Adviser to the Governor on Media and Strategy, Hon. Kayode Akinmade, who expressed the government’s disappointment, stating that the protest was inconsistent with the values and objectives the State upholds

Disclosing that the payment of allowances to athletes commenced later that day, Hon. Akinmade stressed that “Those who protested did so in error (as it was) a clear case of impatience” on the part of the athletes.

Athletes from Kogi State also protested non payment of their allowances a day after that of Ogun athletes but theirs was within their camp as it didn’t disrupt activities at the festival.

For the competitions proper, the aim for the host was like hosting to win as exhibited in the controversial basketball match between their team and Delta which was abandoned owing to encroachment of Ogun fans.

Many other sports witnessed skirmishes especially the combat sports with special reference to kick-boxing where officiating officials were accused of compromising.

That sport allegedly continued late into the night of the closing day after the closing ceremony and it was where Ogun State earned the medals with which they overtook Bayelsa which was coasting to a second position behind perennial winners, Delta State.

Ogun garnered 93 gold medals, one more than Team Bayelsa that have consistently shown that they are making genuine progress in the biennial event. When Bayelsa surprised all to emerge second at the 21st edition in Asaba, Delta State with 106 gold medals, Ogun placed 10th with a meagre 16 gold medals.

Even though Bayelsa State sports commissioner, Dr. Daniel Igali commended Ogun State for their feat, he condemned the controversy in kick-boxing which enabled Ogun shoot up to second position.

Claiming that Ogun “also had para table tennis”, to make hay, Igali stressed that “Kickboxing is a scam. The highest bidder gets awarded a gold medal. I am going to write an official letter of protest to the NSC chairman about sports like kickboxing that don’t have clear scoring rules. They should be excommunicated from the National Sports Festival till they improve on their scoring systems”.

With that said, Igali praised Ogun State for the sporting facilities they put on ground for the Games with some reservations.

“I was happy with Ogun in terms of their facilities and presentation. However, the shenanigans on the final night left me very unimpressed. Till today, the second and third place trophies have not been presented”.

Very few budding stars who challenged the elite athletes like we saw in cycling emerged from the Gateway Games. However, just as the Games ended and the review was about to begin, the sad news of the death of 22 members of the Kano contingent emerged Saturday morning.

While it was reported that the bus conveying the athletes and their officials fell off a bridge 50km to Kano, the Federal Road Safety Commission, FRSC attributed the accident to over speeding.

One of the survivors of the accident in a video that went viral, said the bus broke down about twice on the way but they continued with their journey each time it was repaired.

Stakeholders are querying why state governments would approve that their athletes travel such long distances to events by road instead of flying them there.

The matter was made worse when less than 24 hours after the accident was reported, the Kano State government was said to have approved N1m each for families of the dead athletes.

“This shows how insensitive and uncaring government officials are. What is one million Naira to a family that lost a loved one? So life is that cheap”, Osaretin Emuze, a sports journalist who covered the Gateway Games asked.

As a result of the sad incident, the owners of the Sports Festival, the National Sports Commission, NSC have affirmed that henceforth, participating contingents in future National Sports Festivals must obtain insurance cover while vehicles conveying them to the Games must be mechanically certified and insured before they will be allowed to participate.

Will this directive, though laudable, be adhered to? It is less than two years to the 23rd edition to be hosted by Enugu State and only time will tell.