Athletics
NIGERIAN SPORT – NEVER BEEN THIS BAD!
BY SEGUN ODEGBAMI
These are very dreary times for Nigerian sports. For those of us that have been a part of several generations, the pain is deep.
I was an active participant at the highest level from the mid 1970s when Nigerian sports were on a global ascendancy.
That was when Nigeria started an authentic dominance of Africa in Track and Field, table tennis, (lawn) tennis, boxing, weightlifting and wrestling, joined the elite forces in African football at the Africa Cup of Nations in Ethiopiaand went to the Montreal Olympic Games with some of the best athletes in the world in different events and sports (in Track and Field, and amateur boxing) with realistic chances of carting away some medals.
It is very painful to wake up every week these days, particularly as I write my column, to the reality of the horror that has become the present state of Nigerian sports.
Take the past week for example.
Nigerian athletes just returned from the World Relays in Japan. The event was the qualifying meet for 2020 in Tokyo, Japan.
The Technical Director of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria, AFN, who was with the contingent reported that they were humiliated by the organisers through the poor treatment meted openly only to the Nigerian team.
He described the reception as ‘third class’, and the major cause of the team’s woeful performance and failure to record even a single win.
Unlike all the other teams, Nigeria was taken very far away from the venue and the centre of activities and accommodated in a very low-class hotel.
But why?
The belief now is that it has to do with the two-year-old tiff between the IAAF and the AFN reported in several social media platforms.
The reports say that two years ago the
AFN was erroneously paid $150,000 instead of $20,000 as its annual grant by the
IAAF.
Since then it has failed to refund the excess of $130,000. The AFN has not reacted to the allegation. Neither explaining what happened to the money nor refunding it. According to a letter making the social media rounds, even a pledge to repay given by the sports minister of Nigeria some months ago in Asaba, Nigeria, was not redeemed. Meanwhile, the man may soon be on his way out of the sports ministry.
Nigerian athletes may, indeed, have had
to pay the price for administrative indiscretion, punished for the AFN’s
ineptitude.
A big question menacingly hangs in the air: ‘what happened to the funds’? No one is accepting responsibility, and no one is providing an answer. So, Nigeria, with her innocent athletes, suffer.
This past week, the same international body, the IAAF, de-listed Asaba as host of the African Athletics Track and Field championship because of the shambolic arrangements, the poor state of equipment and facilities, and the technical deficiencies observed glaringly during the competition.
All the results recorded at the event have been cancelled, a total waste of time, effort, and resources. It is a terrible advertisement for Nigeria.
With the 2020 Olympic Games just around the corner, not much is happening to reassure Nigerians of a possible good outing for the country.
This was a country that used to be a part of the final lineups in the sprints, jumps, sprint relays, boxing, and even football at several Olympics.
From 1976 to 2006, a period of some 30 years and 8 different Olympics, Nigeria presented some athletes that were either winning medals or had the capability to do so.
From 1984 Nigeria actually started to win Olympic medals. In 1996 it won an unprecedented number including its first, two Gold medals.
Since then her fortune in medals has been dwindling. How did Nigeria descend into this very sorry pass?
For those of us that have been a part of the history of Nigerian sports since 1976 the present times are the undoubted worst in our country’s history with stories so ugly, they benumb the mind.
For 2003 All African Games hosted in Abuja, Nigeria started to build Africa’s best and most modern Doping Test Centre.
Sixteen years since the event ended the centre is unfinished, its carcass abandoned, with all the resources spent on it going down the drain in a colossal waste.
No one is held to account for what happened. In that same year, Nigerian administrators hired ‘mercenary’ athletes to represent some African countries, in specially identified uncommon sports, to compete against Nigeria as a grand strategy to boost Nigeria’s medal haul.
The mission was that the country would top the medals table in the continent. The country did, people were rewarded and the country celebrated a scam.
For several years now, the country has failed to organize a proper national sports festival, an event designed and started in 1973 to unite the youths of the country through healthy social interaction and sports competition, whilst identifying and developing the best among them discovered during the games.
The last one that held in December 2018 in Abuja may go down in the history of the country as the worst sports event ever hosted as a result of its meaninglessness and remote distance from the objectives for which the festival was established in the first place.
It is imperative to call for a total review of the vision, aims and objectives of the sports festival that has been distorted through time, with little or nothing derived from it any more.
The proposed switch of allegiance by Nigerian sprint star Favour Ofili to Türkiye has hit a major obstacle, with Nigerian sports authorities insisting that the 23-year-old remains eligible to compete for Nigeria.
Ofili announced in September on her Instagram account, followed by more than 40,000 people, that she was beginning “a new chapter representing Türkiye,” signalling her intention to change sporting nationality after years of representing the Nigeria national athletics team.
“I moved to Türkiye to save my career from officials,” the U.S.-based sprinter later wrote, explaining that her decision was influenced by frustrations with Nigeria’s sporting administration.
However, nearly six months after the announcement, Ofili has yet to compete for her new country, and the process appears stalled.
A senior official of the National Sports Commission told reporters in February that Ofili is still considered a Nigerian athlete and cannot immediately switch allegiance.
“She is still our athlete,” the official said, adding that Ofili was among the elite athletes who received training scholarships from the commission last year.
According to the official, if the sprinter intends to compete for another country, she may have to wait until September 2028, potentially ruling out a change before the 2028 Summer Olympics.
Career Frustrations
Ofili’s rapid rise in athletics has been accompanied by several controversies that have strained her relationship with Nigeria’s sporting authorities.
At the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, she was among Nigerian athletes barred from competing after failing to meet required out-of-competition doping control tests.
Ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, she also revealed she had been excluded from the women’s 100-metre event despite qualifying.
“It is with great sadness that I have just been informed that I will not be competing in the 100-metre dash at these Games,” she wrote at the time. “I qualified, but those in charge did not register me. I have worked for four years to earn this opportunity.”
Debate Over Loyalty
The controversy has sparked debate within Nigeria’s athletics community.
Former African sprint queen Mary Onyali recently said she rejected offers from European countries to compete under their flags during her career because of her loyalty to Nigeria.
Ofili responded by suggesting the circumstances were different, noting that Onyali “was never denied the opportunity to compete in any competition after working hard to qualify.”
Speaking through her coach, Dennis Shaver, Ofili also dismissed speculation that financial incentives were the main motivation for her proposed move.
“I am a woman, and I have a short-term job,” she said. “This is the ideal time to make the most of the time I have left in my career.”
Türkiye’s Recruitment Drive
Ofili’s case comes amid an aggressive talent recruitment drive by Türkiye aimed at strengthening its athletics programme ahead of the Los Angeles Olympics.
Following a disappointing performance at the Paris Games, where the country finished 64th in the medal table without a gold medal, Turkish authorities launched a strategy to recruit top athletes from abroad.
According to athletics coordinator Önder Özbilen, several international athletes have already agreed to compete for Türkiye.
Among them are four Jamaican athletes, including Olympic discus champion Roje Stona, as well as five Kenyan runners, including former marathon world-record holder Brigid Kosgei.
Whether Ofili will ultimately join them remains uncertain.
For now, the Port Harcourt-born sprinter remains officially tied to Nigeria, leaving unresolved the question of which flag she might carry on the road to the Los Angeles Olympics.
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Athletics
World Athletics Nullifies Junior Records of Three Ethiopian Runners Over Age Irregularities
World Athletics has refused to ratify several junior world records set by three Ethiopian distance runners after an investigation uncovered irregularities in their dates of birth.
The decision follows a probe by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU), which determined that the real ages of Birke Haylom, Melknat Wudu and Medina Eisa could not be conclusively verified when the records were set between 2023 and 2024.
The ruling means several outstanding under-20 performances by the trio will no longer stand as official world junior records.
Among the affected marks are Haylom’s world under-20 bests in the mile (4:17.13), indoor 1,500 metres (3:58.43) and outdoor 5,000 metres (14:23.71). Wudu’s junior indoor 3,000 metres record of 8:32.34 has also been invalidated, while Eisa’s 5,000 metres time of 14:21.89—previously recognised as the world junior best—has been struck from the record books.
Investigators confirmed that Eisa’s actual birth date is 17 October 2002, rather than 3 January 2005 as previously documented. The finding means she was 22 when she won gold in the 5,000 metres at the 2024 World Under-20 Championships, well above the age limit for the junior category.
The AIU also concluded that Haylom was older than indicated in her official documents, although details of the discrepancy were not publicly disclosed. In Wudu’s case, unresolved doubts about her birth date prevented the ratification of her record.
Under championship rules, athletes competing in under-20 events must be 19 or younger during the competition year and must provide verifiable documentation confirming their eligibility.
While the athletes’ performances remain valid as competition results, they cannot be recognised as junior records.
The investigation forms part of a wider age-verification campaign by the AIU in East African athletics ahead of the next 2026 World Under-20 Championships in the United States.
So far, World Athletics has not announced disciplinary sanctions against the athletes, although AIU regulations allow bans of between two and four years in proven cases of age manipulation.
The removal of the five records marks a significant setback for performances that had previously placed the runners among the most promising young talents in global distance running.
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The Future Olympian Athletics Classic has been rescheduled from the first quarter of 2026 to the last quarter of the year, as organisers move to transform the meet into a truly national developmental programme spanning Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones.
In a statement signed by Bruce Ijirigho, a former quarter-miler and Team Nigeria captain to the 1976 Summer Olympics, the postponement was described as a strategic decision aimed at broadening participation and ensuring that young talents across the country are discovered and nurtured systematically.
The competition is being organised by the Youth Sports Renaissance Foundation (YSRF), a non-profit organisation registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission by Ijirigho, Godwin Obasogie and Charlton Ehizuelen. The foundation’s primary objective is to revive athletics, particularly at the secondary school level, and rebuild Nigeria’s once-thriving grassroots sports culture.
Ijirigho, who serves as Project Lead, explained that the initiative is not about creating something entirely new but about restoring a proven system that once produced champions.
“This competition is not about reinventing the wheel,” he said. “It is about bringing back the culture that ensured that my contemporaries and I were discovered early in secondary school, received the right coaching and academic support, and went on to earn scholarships while combining sports with education. Many of us later became national, continental and global champions.”
He identified early exposure and modern, age-appropriate coaching as the missing links in youth development across Nigeria and much of Africa.
“The bane of sports in Nigeria and many African countries is that our youth don’t get opportunities early enough and lack modern coaching techniques that accelerate their development,” Ijirigho stated.
According to him, the Future Olympian Athletics Classic will go beyond competition by incorporating international coaching clinics designed to transfer contemporary skills and knowledge to Games masters and grassroots coaches nationwide.
“The Classic will not only discover talents in their early teens but also upgrade the capacity of our coaches. That way, we will nurture them properly to become Olympians and world beaters in their late teens and early twenties. This programme is strictly for high school students because it is developmental.”
The decision to expand the event to all six geopolitical zones, he noted, reflects a commitment to inclusivity and equal opportunity.
“Talents abound in every nook and cranny of the country. There are middle- and long-distance runners, sprinters, quarter-milers, jumpers and hurdlers who were either not discovered at all or discovered too late. With this postponement, we can widen the tent and give every Nigerian child a fair chance.”
Ijirigho expressed confidence that with proper planning and sustained grassroots investment, Nigeria can reclaim its place at the summit of global athletics.
“We have what it takes to dominate athletics worldwide. All we need is to get our development programme right. The Future Olympian Athletics Classic will lay that foundation for our youth and for the country when it begins in the last quarter of 2026.”
With its expanded national scope and emphasis on structured youth development, the initiative signals a renewed push to reposition Nigerian athletics for long-term global success.
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