By Patrick Omorodion Sports Guard
That Team Nigeria put up a dismal performance at the just concluded London Olympics is no longer news but what should be asked now is why it happened and how it could be corrected in future.

Days after the Federal Government announced it would overhaul the entire sports sector, no word has been heard about how it is going about it.

That has always been the problem with Nigeria, so much talk but no action. We have passed through this same part several times in the past but seem not to have learnt anything from it, hence we keep making the same mistakes but expecting a different result.

Even the House of Representatives Committee on Sports whose function is supposed to end at making laws that would help in moving sports forward, always want to join in executing projects or supervising athletes themselves.

Otherwise what is the business of the committee members at training tours of the athletes or even the competition proper if it is not to accumulate foreign exchange which could have been ploughed into preparing the athletes for the challenges ahead.

Talking about overhauling the sports sector, at the Federal level, it should start from the Sports Federations. Competent secretariat staff should be employed not the present case where we have some secretaries who could hardly interpret technical reports of coaches how much more write one themselves.

Members of federations should be men of means and intellect who can go to the private sector and source for funds and not those whose only ambition is to sit and await government subvention which are unaccounted for most of the times.

Very few of them existed in the past but for space I will mention three here. Cosmos Maduka of Table Tennis, Eddie Aderinokun of Volleyball and Dan Ngerem of  Athletics. Maduka got frustrated after his efforts were not complemented or appreciated while Aderinokun was schemed out to make way for a civil servant whose only ambition was to climb to the world body of the sport and perpetrate himself in power.

Ngerem’s sins were that he was too frugal and didn’t allow wastage while some of the civil servants felt he drove them to the limits to achieve results. And some ex athletes wanted a piece of the action, not necessarily to make an impact but to share from the national cake.

It was during Ngerem’s tenure at the AFN that Blessing Okagbare was discovered from a junior championship, the Nkoyo Ibori Championships. The AFN also had other competitions from which other athletes were picked but those who didn’t like him ensured he never came back after his first term. Shockingly though, after one of their own, a former athlete who succeeded Ngerem failed, they shamefully asked him to come back but of course, he turned them down.

Whatever Okagbare later became was as a result of the emergence of Solomon Ogba, a former Delta State Sports Commissioner, who became president of the AFN. Chief Ogba almost threw in the towel when he discovered that leading the federation was not as easy as he thought.

As an indigene of Delta State, Okagbare got the support of the government which ensured she got into school in the United States and therefore was exposed to good facilities. Even though she and other athletes got federal government grants late, they were camped in the US for awhile, but it was not enough to compete against others who had been preparing two or three years earlier.

Okagbare’s major undoing at the London Olympics was not that she burnt herself out, running in some meets close to the Games, after all those who beat her to the medals equally took part in those meets and Okagbare beat them there.

Those athletes may have taken the pre Olympics meets as part of their training but for Okagbare it was real business and the result boosted her morale for the London Games and Nigerians began to dream of a medal from her. She became the eye of Team Nigeria in London and the pressure began to mount.

Seasoned coach and an IAAF instructor, Rotimi Obajimi said during a discussion recently that Okagbare could have been able to win a medal if she had technical tips from the coaching crew. According to him, Okagbare ran the semi final as if it was the final.

“You don’t win a medal in the semi final so she should have just run to qualify knowing that the final was coming up in a couple of hours. She burnt her energy in the semi final and there was no way she could have recouped enough energy for the final,” Obajimi told this reporter.

After the 100m failure, Obajimi said Okagbare was psychologically down and needed a psychologists to work on her for the long jump event but doubted if they had one in their camp.

Apart from adequate and proper coaching tips as well as  psychological motivation, I doubt if Nigerian athletes  have dieticians attached to them. No wonder they feed voraciously like this reporter noticed during the training tour of Cuba before the All Africa Games in 2003. Their unfitness was noticed by Cuban doctors who advised they should be dewormed. They started feeding properly thereafter and the training they had reflected in their performance at the Abuja Games that year.

Our Group Sports Editor, Onochie Anibeze also reported from London during the Olympics how our athletes were eating as if they won’t have another. That is the true story of the Nigerian athlete. It is not only the athletes’ performance, coaching, psychology and nutrition also play major roles in winning of medals.

So as the restructuring begins, square pegs should be put in square holes at all levels while the federal government should behave like its counterparts around the world by voting money which should be released on time and not tied to the regular delayed annual budget. For President Jonathan’s information, Brazil has earmarked $700 million (about N112 billion) to prepare her athletes for the 2016 Olympic Games which the country will be hosting.