Etymology shows that the phrase ‘different strokes for different folks’ has its origin from the US in the 50s.

It was however, the boxing legend, Muhammad Ali who is said to have popularised it in November 1966 while explaining his boxing strategy during his many fights. Why am I bringing this here? It is because at the recently concluded World Championship in Tokyo, Japan, our girl, Oluwatobiloba Amusan picked a silver in the women’s 100m hurdles and the media described it as a ‘golden’ silver.

Surprisingly, as at the time of writing this, no word of reward has come from the presidency, now reputed for rewarding second placed teams, especially in football, like the Super Eagles.

The sports authorities seemed to have shouted ‘ope o’ for not returning from Tokyo empty handed and celebrated Amusan’s feat. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom Athletics is sulking that for the first time in 22 years, they returned from a World Athletics Championship without a gold medal.

This is despite winning a total of five medals, three silver and two bronze with a 64-man contingent. What shocked me is that, the official who expressed disappointment on the UK athletes’ ‘poor’ performance said that the budget for athletics for four years, from 2024 leading up to the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles was cut.

This official is Jack Buckner, the CEO of UK Athletics who told the BBC that they were awarded “£20.45m in funding from UK Sport for the four-year cycle to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics – a reduction of £1.725m from Paris”.

His grouse was that their budget was cut by £1.725m.

Really? This prompted me to pick up my calculator to find out how much the money was in Naira.

From my calculation, UK Athletics received from UK Sports, the equivalent of our Sports Commission, about N42 billion for four years. Remember UK Athletics is the equivalent of our Athletics Federation of Nigeria, AFN.

From the budget, athletes, according to their rating, are paid some money directly to contribute to their living and sporting costs so they can focus on competing.

This disclosure made me check the budget for sports in Nigeria and I found out that in 2025 fiscal year, the Bola Tinubu government, which has been described as the most magnanimous, gave sports about N78 billion.

Surprisingly, sports stakeholders lauded the Federal Government’s for the allocation describing it as a significant improvement from the N31bn budgeted for 2024.

With about N42 billion for four years, UK Athletics will be spending about N10.5 billion annually for training and welfare of their athletes.

In the case of Nigeria, the N78 billion is not only to cater for the 28 sports federations but for other things like infrastructure upgrades, grassroots development, international competitions, and administrative functions.

So let’s say the money is divided into two equal parts, and one part is for the 26 federations, it means the amount each federation will expect to get from N39 billion is about N1.4 billion.

Despite this meagre allocation that makes the sports federations always run into crisis during  competitions, because it makes preparations and participation very cumbersome, some administrators still applauded the federal government.

The only federation that saw the money as chicken feed is the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF as the money is not enough to prosecute one AFCON.

The NFF President, Ibrahim Gusau’s response on the annual budget for sports was rather cold; “I can’t say anything about the budget because I don’t know what the N78 billion is going to be for.”

But Gusau is not sincere to himself. It is a fact that the funds they get also go into taking politicians and civil servants who vote for them at elections to competitions.

An NSC official said that “strategic prioritization and efficient management of these resources are imperative to achieve meaningful results,” but we know that the meagre funds they get from government are either misappropriated or embezzled outright.

That is why administrators are always on war path with athletes and technical officials over unpaid allowances and bonuses, including poor kits.

This was responsible for the show of shame by athletes at both the Tokyo and Paris Olympics in 2020 and 2024 respectively.

The most recent of athletes complain was that of Amusan who posted the poor kit provided for them at the just concluded World Championship in Tokyo on social media.

Despite the distraction of poor kits, Amusan still pulled herself together to earn a podium performance for Nigeria’s only medal.

Amusan had complained that, unlike other nations whose athletes received kits neatly packaged in suitcases, Nigerian athletes were given nylon bags with minimal content.

She also faulted the quality of the kits and noted that despite officials requesting shoe sizes, no shoes were provided.

Rather than allow the AFN to defend themselves on Amusan’s claims, the NSC chairman, Mallam Shehu Dikko did the image laundering for them.

He said that “the kits are not inferior”, stressing that the misunderstanding by Amusan was likely because of poor packaging rather than the quality of the kits.

Why must the Nigeria situation always be different? If the budget from the government is not infinitesimal to cater for all requirements, the support coming from sponsors are also poorly handled.

This gave room to the complaint from Amusan which Mallam Dikko argued may have been tied more to presentation than substance.

“The Athletics Federation of Nigeria has already explained that they are providing the kits in bits and pieces, so it shouldn’t really be an issue,” he stated.

No no Mallam Dikko. Athletes’ kits mustn’t be provided in bits and pieces. Even if our athletes are refugees, they deserve some decent treatment, especially as they are the country’s Ambassadors in the eyes of the whole world.