A Speech by Mr. Smart E. Akraka, Foundation President, Nigeria Olympians Association [NOA], in November 2004, in the United States of America
I am very happy and quite proud, to be here at this Convention and celebration. I feel honoured to have been asked to contribute some views and ideas, as well as being invited to attend this important Convention. I am happy, because this gathering is like a very special social reunion for me, as, in my previous capacity as a sports administrator and team manager at the national level, I have closely interacted with many of you here, from way back in the mid-seventies. It is very refreshing that some thirty years on, we can meet again to socialize, exchange ideas and learn from one another.
I am proud to be at this Convention because the caliber of people here, particularly the members of this sports-related Association, is an illuminating example of the best combination of education and sports. You are such high-quality products in your careers and professions, and, good community members, that you are role models and worthy ambassadors of the natural blend of top-class education and sports. Nigeria, and the entire global sports community, will always be proud of your generation.
Like most of you participating in this Convention, I was once a member of the Nigerian Athletics Team and, like some of you, I also represented Nigeria in the Olympic Games, in Rome in 1960. I am now the Chairman of the Bayelsa State Athletics Association, a member of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria and, the founding and current President of the Nigeria Olympians Association, NOA. It is therefore only normal that, I should give you a brief semi-official report of Nigeria;s participation at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, and the general state of sports in Nigeria.
In addition to the men and women who represented Nigeria in the Athens Olympics, there are now about 600 members of the Nigeria Olympians Association. This membership is made up of all the men and women who have represented Nigeria in the Olympic Games, since her first Olympic Games in Helsinki in 1952, in a dozen-odd sports disciplines.It is very instructive that right from the beginning, Nigeria’s participation in the world’s most prestigious multi-sport competition has benefited from the successful mix of education and sports.
Right from the fifties, Nigeria’s Olympic Games contingent, particularly the Athletics Team, has always been made up of graduates, undergraduates and athletes with higher education. By the seventies, during your time, all of Nigeria’s top athletes and internationals were products of the university system in the U.S.A. supplemented with a few from the Nigerian university system. Nigeria;s contingent to the 2004 Athens Olympics in eight-odd sports was made up university-educated sportsmen and women in the sports of athletics, women’s basketball and table tennis. However, in today’s world of sports, the most successful nations in the Olympic Games have usually groomed all their sportsman and women in all the various sports through their university sports-training systems. Virtually all professional sports today are taught and improved through education and the university/higher sports institute systems. The United States of America’s huge international success in most sports is the result of its strong sports base that is broad based and specialized at high school and university levels. Other nations in the world that want to achieve comparable international sports success must adopt this America programme and, Nigeria should go back with full commitment to this recipie of education and sports.
To be quite frank, Nigeria performed badly at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, winning just two bronze medals in the men’s 4x100m and 4x400m relays. The fairly good news, especially for the sport of Athletics or Track and Field, was the continuity in that Athens made it four consecutive Olympics, 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004, in which Nigeria has won Olympic Games medals in Athletics. In all these four Olympic Games, Nigeria has won medals in the relay races.
In 1992 in Barcelona, Nigeria won a silver in the men’s 4x100m and a bronze in the women’s 4x100m. In Atlanta in 1996, Nigeria won a silver in the women’s 4x400m. In Sydney in 2000, Nigeria won a silver in the men’s 4x400m, and in Athens in 2004 Nigeria won bronze medals in the men’s 4x100m and 4x400m. This makes am impressive total of six relay medals in four Olympics, and when we add Nigeria’s first-ever Olympic Games Athletics medal, a bronze in the men’s 4x400m relay in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, the grand total is seven relay medals from five Olympics, in the space of twenty years.
The consoling and inspiring aspects of these Olympic statistics is that Nigeria has continued to show the world that it is a power to be reckoned with in both the men’s and women’s sprints. We have sadly lost much ground in our other traditional strong events, the long jump and triple jump. Nigeria has won Olympic gold in the women’s long jump,’ gold in men’s football, silver in women’s weightlifting, and multiple silver and bronze medals in Boxing. Given all these credentials, the hard truth is that Nigerian sports at the highest international levels, is at the crossroads, and signs of decline are becoming noticeable, giving some cause for alarm and a speedy remedy.
All good things must run their course and eventually come to an end. The massive sports development programme, initiated in the early seventies, that focused on manpower development in terms of athletes and coaches as well as the building of a network of first-class infrastructure, served Nigeria very well right into the nineties. There is now urgent need for change and expansion.
Nigerian sports is in the revival process of being re-planned, retooled and eventually re-implemented. What are the lessons from the past that we can incorporate into new and more modern ideas to reposition and strengthened all levels of sports in Nigeria? We have to start with what is on the ground and it is not a pleasant picture.
There are now well over forty-five federal government, state government and private universities, over forty polytechnics and over thirty colleges of education in Nigeria today. Sadly, none of these institutions of higher learning are producing any world-class male or female athletes. This is the sorry state of sports development in Nigeria. Our stars athletes have aged, some have been to five Olympics. Where do we get the replacements for them, and how soon?
These Nigerian institutions are still producing middle-level Physical and Health Education graduates who are useful for recreational sports activities. Our sole National Institute for Sports in Lagos is producing middle-level coaches and administrators. There are currently no world-class coaches working in Nigeria today. Many of you in the audience remember when there were nine African-American Olympic stars and coaches working in Nigeria and a decade ago we had some Cuban Athletics coaches.
It is not all gloom. Some of your contemporaries are doing their bit as Directors of Sports, top sports administrators and coaches. There are more doctorate degree holders working in sports today in Nigeria. Yet, our problems of true sports development involving manpower and infrastructure still exist. Instead of going overseas for competitions we now send our various sportsmen to Cuba, Germany and Bulgaria for rushed cosmetic training just before competitions like the All-Africa Games and the Olympics.
Our sports development problems are manpower and infrastructure related. The Ministry of Sports itself recognizes these problems and on its part it has recently set up panels on how to administer football properly and a panel to examine why Nigeria faired so badly at the Athens Olympics. Some believe that we need to completely overhaul our sports administration structure. Some people are calling for a return to the National Sports Commission structure while others are calling for a more radical complete privatization of sports in Nigeria. The Nigeria Olympians Association is making suggestions on how to revive sports in Nigeria. We believe that Olympians should be more involved in the running of all sports Associations.
For whatever reasons, football or soccer seems to be the favoured sport of the state governments and even the federal government. Disproportionate amounts of funds are voted to run both male and female football. But our football success is really a mirage. Generally, Nigeria’s star male and female soccer stars are not as educated as their counterparts in Track and Field or Basketball. Most of them acquire their basic skills locally and are then bought by clubs in Europe who then turn them into super-skilled stars. These overseas ready-made stars are then assembled as our national team. It is no wonder that there is now a national clamour for world-class coached to truly develop home-grown football in Nigeria.
The major problem is the Nigerian economy, which is now very weak. The weak economy has impacted negatively on both education and sports. Proper funding of our Higher educational system is still a big problem and under these circumstances it is virtually impossible for these institutions to run comprehensive sports programmes or even afford to give scholarships to young sportsmen and women. Of course the federal ministry of sports or the state governments cannot themselves offer scholarships to young sportsmen and women to study in higher institutions in Nigeria or overseas in the U.S.A. and Europe.
Shortage of funds has meant that there are no modern sports infrastructure in many of these educational institutions and the newly-created states. As an example many young athletes have never seen hurdles. Lack of equipment and few competitions have not helped matters. The multinationals and companies have continued to help by sponsoring competitions in the various sports, but they could do a whole lot more. They in turn, argue that the quality of sports administration and transparency in the spending of sponsorship money must improve if they are to spend more on sports sponsorship in Nigeria.
The big challenge for all of us here and the sports community in Nigeria is how do we reconnect both education and sports to produce great sportsmen and women who are also very useful citizens of the community and country? We have done it before and we surely can do it again. We need the will and the commitment.
We must start with evolving a blueprint for success. We need a long-term programme and we must identify standards that we will faithfully adhere to. Short-cuts have not and will not help us.
We must have an official sports policy that permanently links education to sports. Nigeria as a nation cannot run away from the time-proven axiom of producing young men and women with sound minds in sound bodies who will become better citizens and builders of a strong and progressive nation. As they say, we have to catch them young, which means, we must start from the primary schools. Every primary school must have a playing ground. Instead of mere physical education exercises, the pupils must be taught the rudiments of a few selected sports. And instead of non-specialist Games masters there should be specialist sports masters. Then there must be regular primary school competitions in the various sports at local government, state and national levels. A reward scheme of prizes and scholarships will encourage better performances and dedication.
At the secondary school level there will be more sports and more specialization and of course more and better-trained coaches. It is at the high school level of education that the future superstars in the various sports are spotted . Their careers are then clearly mapped-out. They are late exposed to and given specialized training and grooming in the university system. Our high schools should really be our breeding grounds and the universities the finishing schools if we are to continue to produce generations of first-class international sports men and women non-stop, in a spectrum of about twenty different sports.
We have identified where and how Nigeria can produce whole new generations of world-class sportsmen and women. How do we now get the young talents and potentials to these places for specialized training, keep and groom them there, and then ensure that they achieve international success? Like every other sector of the Nigerian economy, education and sports need a lot of private sector participation, sponsorship and business partnership, for these sectors to come alive again and contribute their quota towards national development. Private sector organizations and Non-Government Organisations NGOs, both local and international are very welcome to help grow the education and sports sectors in Nigeria.
Associations like yours, must be highly commended for your initiatives to help jump-start a new sports development momentum in Nigeria. Making it possible for young qualified sportsmen and women to obtain scholarships to study and train in universities in the U.S.A. will indeed be a great and lasting contribution.
Other areas of support such as the donation of sports kit and equipment to schools, clubs, in the rural and urban areas, sponsorship of regular competitions at school, junior and senior levels in all sports across the nation, and, sponsorship of teams and clubs to compete in international tournaments, are gradually coming into place.
I must go back to our original theme and state some very obvious facts. Education and Sports go hand in hand, and are inseparable. I believe that they have a Chicken and Egg relationship in that Education is Sports and Sports is Education.
Sports is education. It is a useful learning process in the upbringing of children and young people. In sports you learn the basics of life. You learn early in life that there are no short-cuts, that you must train to win, that there is no gain without pain, that you cannot fake it or disguise your form, that you must play by the rules and be law-abidding, that you must not cheat, use illegal performance-enhancing substances, and the overriding spirit of sportsmanship and fair-play.
When these guidelines and principles of sports are adhered to with commitment, young sportsmen and women usually grow to become useful and responsible members of the community and nation. Sports maketh a man and a woman. Sports make good human beings. To live a fuller and richer life young sportsmen and women need to be further educated too, in many other fields and in sports too. Every young man and woman in Nigeria should have a right to both sports and education.
Education is inseparable from sports in that the progress of both is intertwined. Thanks to further education and research there have been very significant improvements in sports, in the areas of kit and equipment manufacturing, training techniques in all sports, sports marketing and promotion, sports management and agencies, sports medicine and techniques for detecting the use of illegal substances. It is therefore obvious that today’s sportsman and woman must in turn be well-educated to keep up and have a successful career in sports.
We have shown how sports right from childhood should ideally go hand in hand with formal education. This is the path we have to emphasize in Nigeria. While sports help to make sports-people better individuals, they also need higher education and professions they can fall back on for life when their sporting careers become naturally over. Through sports scholarships we should pave the way for our youth to acquire knowledge in their fields of choice. For those who also decide to choose sports-related careers, university education in these sports-related careers are very useful too.
I will like to highlight an interesting case-study on the importance of education and sports to the youth. There is an alarming state of youth unemployment coupled with restiveness and resort to violence in certain parts of the Niger Delta of Nigeria. We believe that these youths can better channel their boundless energy into sports with some of them ultimately becoming full-time professional sportsmen with fulfilling and rewarding careers. We are working hard to give these youth a lifeline of education and sports.
Education and Sports should be the birthright of all the youth of the world. Education and Sports will make them better human beings who will be guided by the principles of Olympism. The world definitely needs better human beings guided by sportsmanship and fair play. Your organization and many others offering the youth of the world education and sports deserve praise and encouragement. I thank you and wish you well.
SMART E. AKRAKA
November 2004.