Nigerian Sports development… between Sokoto and sokoto! 

As a writer of a weekly column, sometimes I run out of subject to write about. The mind goes into ‘idle’ mode, blanketed by the innumerable moving parts of life. Scanning through my mind for the ‘bigger’ stories often obscures the smaller and, sometimes, more significant ones that could turn the tide of events and even history. 

That was my situation yesterday. 

The biggest news in the world was of Mr. Donald Trump returning as the 47th President of the United States of America. 

Even in my little village it was the subject of some conversation. One would rightly ask: ‘what has Donald Trump got to do with the price of fish at the Wasimi weekly market?’. Plenty, as it turned out later. 

For 17 years, I have been running a specialized sports secondary school located in Wasimi. 

Before Mr. Trump’s first coming in 2016, my school was preparing, processing and sending a minimum of 4 of the best 20 student athletes that graduated every year, to Colleges and Universities in the USA. These USA institutions had interest to recruit exceptionally gifted young and qualified Nigerian student athletes and offered them scholarships. It was a process that was running smoothly until Donald Trump became President for the first time. 

With Trump in power the conditions for transiting to the USA became more challenging, and more difficult than the proverbial camel passing through the eye of a needle. 

In the 4 years since his exit from office till now, the immigration has improved only ever slightly. It is still a trickle that may now be truncated by Trump’s anti-immigration pronouncements. 

One can now start to appreciate the link between Trump’s victory in the USA elections and my humble investment in the lives of young Nigerian student athletes under my care at the Segun Odegbami International College and Sports Academy (SOCA) in the tiny hamlet of Wasimi, far from the theatre of American politics. 

As Donald Trump returns to power, pictures of that not-so-distant past in the academy returns, leaving my mind reeling in the worry of what to do now with many of the students already working hard at both their sports and academics, and seeing now how the nozzle of their movement to the USA may soon be completely blocked again, shattering their dreams and hopes. 

Yesterday, my mind was heavily burdened by the possible implications of a new Trump era. So, writing this column had to temporarily go into ‘idle mode’, with my mind in a blank state waiting for guidance, a spiritual prompting, when the elements will intervene and the Creator will show up as he has always done in all my affairs. 

Then, as always, it happens in full accordance of my ‘discovery’ of that deep spiritual aspect of life that ‘the Creator always shows up’. 

Whilst waiting, I directed my energy to the ‘Garden of Eden’ a Bamboo entertainment place under construction in the vicinity of SOCA in Wasimi. 

A message flashed across the face of my phone. It was from a Nigerian athletics coach who rarely communicates with me, even if I was partly responsible for his current job as coach in a renowned secondary school in Port Harcourt. 

Two years ago, in recommending him for the job, I knew he was one of the best talent ‘hunters’ and developers in junior athletics in Nigeria. He is that good.

If ‘Buka T’ were to be a Jamaican, he would be a part of that country’s national athletics development program for sprinters. He would be a major player in that ‘Mecca’ of Sprinters’. 

From my studies, great coaches are mined in Jamaica and then attached to the national program – a ‘new’ model of athletics development. The country had changed its development model from that of sending the best young talents to the American Collegiate system, to a more domesticated model of homegrown sports development using trained local coaches and specialized sports schools and clubs to reduce the immigration of athletes to the USA to a trickle, and to build a solid, local production process using well-trained coaches. The model has worked very well. 

Within a few decades, Jamaica has become the sprints capital of the world, producing some of the best male and female sprinters in the world – Yohan Blake, Usain Bolt, Ann Frazier-Price, and a whole army of other new and emerging young sprinters waiting in a long line. 

So, on this day, coach ‘Buka T’ Ayodele Solaja, sends me a ‘love letter’ on my phone. Thoughts about him flash through my mind. I recognize the moment immediately – The Creator is showing up. What is it about ‘Buka T’ that needs my attention?

He was a former national champion in decathlon. He became an athletics coach. He coaches now in a school in Port Harcourt only because he has to survive. Since retiring and becoming a coach, he has discovered and nurtured several local athletes to international stardom and accomplishment. A few have become world class athletes. And he did these things through his own small privately owned Buka Tigers Athletics Club based in Sagamu. 

He has been a part of some Nigerian delegations to some junior international events, but his full-time coaching has been in his own small club. 

Meanwhile, from that his small stable have emerged three Olympians representing Nigeria: Agnes Osazuwa (sprinter); Ezekiel Nathaniel (hurdler); and Tobi Amusan (hurdler, World Champion). That speaks volumes. 

He discovered and trained Tobi Amusan before she immigrated to the US. 

The connection of all this to my dilemma of a ‘blank mind’, Wasimi and Donald Trump starts to dawn. 

With the recent return of the National Sports Commission, a new era in Nigeria’s sports begins. It is time to start thinking of deviating from sending Nigerian student athletes to the USA as our major model of athletics development. With Trump, it will become even much more difficult. 

That’s why Ayodele Solaja popped up yesterday. He is on my mind. It makes sense now. 

He is the subject of my column this week. Although he may be a small character in the world, he is also a potential giant. 

We can convert the seeming ‘disappointment’ of Mr. Trump’s return into a blessing-in-disguise for Nigeria, by altering the country’s old strategy of sending student athletes to the USA to that of domesticating the development process through Nigerian schools and sports clubs deliberately prepared for purpose. Particularly, in athletics. 

The NSC should start to think differently. It can start with a small and simple program of support for local coaches, clubs, academies and specialized sports schools. 

Ayodele Solaja ‘Buka T’ may be a good place to start. In short, Nigeria may be searching in Sokoto (a town in Northern Nigeria) for what it may already have in the pocket of its Sokoto (trousers).