My emotions are oscillating dangerously between celebration and mourning! I do not know whether to laugh or to cry.
I am writing this on Wednesday night. The week before had been traumatic. At the IAAF World Athletics Championship in Daegu, South Korea, I watched as Nigerian Track and Field athletes put up performances that clearer reflected that the country was not on the verge of achieving anything major in the world of sports. The picture was clearly painted that the country should not expect any form or shape of medal when the world assembles in England in the summer of 2012 for the Olympics Games. The writing was clearly on the wall. For my involvement with the aborted effort, 8 years ago, to prepare Nigeria to win some medals at the 2012 Olympics, I am bound to lament and mourn the present state of Nigerian sports – so ordinary in Daegu, where other smaller African countries emerged as global sports giants – Kenya, Ethiopia, Morocco, South Africa, even Mozambique, and Burundi!

As Daegu drew to an end, then comes along the All African Games in Maputo, Mozambique, involving all 53 countries in Africa. Nigeria had always done well at the Games, always ending up one of the top three countries in the continent on the medals table. The first week was an extension of the Daegu trauma. Nigeria was struggling amongst much smaller countries to pick up medals even in some of the sports considered Nigeria’s traditional stronghold. Fortunately, for the first time the events were not available to be seen on Nigerian television, so Nigerians were saved the agony of seeing its boxers and table tennis players ‘wobble and fumble’. It was agonising. Every Nigerian was thinking the worst possible scenario – the country will not end up in one of the top three spots as is wont. When South Africa has amassed over 60 medals, Nigeria was under 10! It was that ‘bad’.
So, as I am writing this I am also listening to Brila FM radio station. The station has been brilliant in filling Nigerians in with live and delayed reports of everything going on in Maputo. I have just heard the news. Nigeria has moved up the medals table as we approach the end of the All African Games in Maputo. That is a bit consoling. There is no blow-by-blow account of events at the games, but since Track and Field events started early in the week Nigeria has moved up rapidly from 9th to 2nd place on the medals table. I am heaving a sigh of relief. My lamentation is slowly turning to laughter. The tide has started to change, the slide downwards has halted, and the country has started to climb sharply up the ladder of medals, and is likely to come to shuddering halt at its usual plateau, the level of achievement where the country seems to have taken up permanent residency – second or third place in Africa (except when the country hosted and performed ‘wonders’ to top the medals table). My late father would say: ‘no pass, no fail, no moving away from the same spot’. Thats the plateau. It is both deception and redeeming. Its deception comes from a false sense of accomplishment when the competition is restricted to Africa, and disappears the moment the scope of competition moves beyond Africa. Such ‘accomplishments’ manage to massage our ego, to put some smile on our faces, to make us look good to ourselves, but fail to attract the same feelings on closer scrutiny. At the All Africa Games, Nigeria manages every time to exploit the advantages of multiple sports, the country’s population (a rich source of talent) and the natural strength of its athletes in some specific sports that gives them the winning edge to amass more medals and achieve flattering results. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the country is already second on the medals table as Brila FM is ‘singing’ this moment. Now, all the athletes and officials will go home celebrating this ‘monumental’ achievement.

So, between Daegu and Maputo I have to contend with these fluctuating emotions of lamentation and celebration, between the mediocre performance in Daegu and the dominance of Nigeria’s sprinting and jumping giants in Maputo. That’s the deception and the redemption of the All African Games. It gives Nigerians a feeling of accomplishment even when we know that it is pyrrhic and relative! Thats why I refer to the level of success at the African Games as a plateau above which the country must rise to be considered a true sporting giant.

The plateau is where not to be. The country must aim higher in its ambitions and climb higher in its accomplishments. This can be achieved through a well articulated, well planned, measurable process of discovering and honing the country’s raw talents that abound all over, using people that have the qualification, the knowledge, the experience, and the intellectual capacity to train and take the young athletes from raw talent to become global champions. This metamorphosis cannot be wished into being. It cannot be bought also. Producing a world champion is a slow, gradual, meticulous, methodical, marathon race that takes several-years of consistent, dedicated hard work that would task financial and physical resources, demand patience, and require plenty of good luck amongst several other intangible factors that will come into play, including the political will of a country’s leadership to support the cause and the athletes. The success factors are facilities, funding, human resources, and a great training programme under a knowledgeable and experienced coach! Nigeria does not seem to have all of these in place at the same time, and that is why its sports development is stunted and inconsistent, and at the global stage its achievements are few and sometimes even vague. Our performances in Africa give the impression that all is well whilst our performance at global competitions shows that we still have a long way yet to go to be considered giants. Between Daegu and Maputo is the void to fill!