The 2024 Paris Olympic Games ended the way they started: colourful and breathtaking. In between the opening minutes and the closing moments were, however, a cocktail of messy acts, flipflops and unmitigated individual and national shows of shame. Nigeria is a huge part of the ensemble of shameful offerings.
Host nation France was unsparing in her expenditure to make the Olympics memorable. She scored many firsts for her innovations. Holding the opening ceremony on water was remarkably innovative. A real splash of aquatic splendour cast on a kaleidoscope of gaily attired athletes from 206 nations around the world was both compelling and friendly on the eyes. If the host had intended to achieve eye-catching optics, she succeeded on a massive scale. It was bang on colour. Grand in complexities and grandiose in its elaborateness. Never mind the sexual orientation polemics, racial taunts and medals quality that defined certain moments. The Paris Olympics measured up to Olympotic dimension (Oga Ben Ayade, apologies sir).
And thank you France for offering the world something out of the routine. The event was also heavy on budget. Data by Marketwatch provided by Dow Jones placed the cost of the Paris Olympics at an estimated $8.2 billion. Even at this cost, it still measures as the sixth most expensive Olympics in world history. The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, still rank as the most expensive ever at nearly $25 billion.
Records were broken on and off the fields. Love was shared. War memories vanished, at least for the duration of the Games. Israel-Hamas war, Russia-Ukraine battleground hostilities and other wars shrank in space and time in the media. The world was thrilled by jaw-dropping acts of men and women.
At the end, 84 nations graced the medals table. The United States led the log with 40 gold, 44 silver and 42 bronze, a total of 126 medals. Host nation, France placed 5th with 16 gold, 26 silver and 22 bronze, a haul of 64 medals. This excludes Belarus and Russia, the two nations that had a total of 32 athletes who all competed as Athlète Individuel Neutre, the French name for Individual Neutral Athlete. Truly an Olympics of the beauty and the beast.
And here’s the beastly, dark side of the Olympics. Nigeria was missing on the medals log. Nigeria spent N9 billion graciously approved by President Bola Tinubu to execute the Olympics. Another N3 billion was approved for the para-Olympics. Aside the N9 billion, the Nigerian Olympics Committee and the sporting bodies that participated at the Games also got pockets of sponsorships from corporates as well as partial funding from the International Olympics Committee (IOC). So, money was never a challenge. The real challenge was Nigerian officials. They had their own Olympics in France. They were competing in their self-conjured games of sharing money, formula for sharing money, drawing up lists for effective looting of the N9 billion and more. They were consumed in their ignoble indulgence that they even forgot why they were in Paris. Athletes’ names could not be submitted, athletes were left unattended to. Their spirit was dampened by officials who should be all over them cheering and encouraging them. How do you explain the case of one of the world’s fastest 100-metre sprinters, Favour Ofili. She was one of the fastest women this year heading into the Olympics, but she couldn’t even compete in the race she had both comparative and competitive advantage. At the end, she was pushed to the 200-metre race and she flopped at 6th position after the emotional trauma of being let down by Nigerian officials who were supposed to be in Paris at the behest of the athletes. Nigerian Olympics officials failed to register her for the event, simple as that. Were they under a spell? Was it the same spell that overwhelmed them in Tokyo Olympics four years ago when she was one of 10 Nigerian athletes who could not compete because Nigerian Olympics officials failed to organize mandatory doping tests for them? In some cases, the tests were said to be below international standards. And was it the same spell that was at work in the case of Nigeria’s first ever cyclist, Ese Ukpeseraye, who had no bike and had to ‘borrow’ a bike from the German team to be able to compete at the Paris Olympics?
The bottomline was that Nigeria happened to them. Nigeria had 87 athletes in 12 sports but miraculously had no presence on the medal table, neither was her flag hoisted at any victory podium. That’s over N9 billion flushed down the drain. The acclaimed Giant of Africa was missing from the Olympics medals table graced by Morocco, Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa, Cabo Verde, Cote D’Ivoire and other less endowed African countries. Countries like Dominica, Fiji and others you may never have heard about, even the Refugee Olympic Team, had their imprints on the medals table. The reason is not for absence of exemplary and competitive athletes. It is simply down to administrative tardiness and corruption that run deep in the nation’s public space.
Given the public outrage that greeted Nigeria’s woeful outing at the Games, you would expect consequences. You would expect a thorough investigation of how so much was spent for nothing. And you would expect heads to roll in the Ministry of Sport Development and all the bodies and persons that choreographed this mass failure. Certain persons including the Sports Minister, Senator John Owan Enoh, had apologized. The President of the Nigeria Olympic Committee (NOC), Mr. Habu Gumel, has promised “decisive action to address the underlying issues that have contributed to the sub-par performance.” But it’s only a promise. Nothing will happen to those who bungled the process with their proclivity to corruption and a mindset of zero accountability.
President Tinubu, for the sake of hurting Nigerians, should cause an independent inquest into the ignominy in Paris. No responsible government will invest N9 billion in a failed project and look away without asking questions. Tinubu should ask the hard questions this time round. Both Enoh and Gumel should face a panel to explain to Nigerians how and why Nigeria made all the wrong headlines in an Olympics that smaller nations used to burnish their image.
But, hey, there is a whimper of hope, a flickering flame that lights the path of the athletes today and tomorrow. It’s the story of beautiful and determined Rena Wakama and her female basketball team, D’Tigress. They won no medal but they won the heart of the world and made history with their excellent performance. Wakama, 32, was named Best Basketball Coach at the 2024 Olympics after leading D’Tigress to historic quarter-final achievement, beating Australia and Canada in the group stage before bowing to the US, the perennial custodian of the basketball diadem. While Nigerians savour the accolades showered on Wakama and the D’Tigress, they await the action from Tinubu on the circus show of shame in Paris.
First published in Sunday Sun
