If the watching of foreign football matches can be made into an Olympics event, I am sure Nigeria would have got some medals at the last Olympics. Unfortunately for us, medals were given to nations that developed their people rather than those who specialize on the consumption of the products of other, thinking people. There are still more Olympics to come in the future. There are several ways to continue scoring zero in these games. We shall explore some of them here.
1. Business as usual. While other nations spend up to ten years catching their athletes at a very young age and developing them, a nation that wants to score zero will wait till there only a few months left; Go after those of their countrymen and women who have long abandoned their fatherland to sojourn in other lands but were not sufficiently good to meet the team list in those countries; present these rejects as your Olympic team.
2. Ignore the development of primary and secondary school sports facilities. In the 1960s when foreign missionaries ran our schools, a primary school compound had a school field lined with race tracks; a weather station, Nature Study corners in class rooms; stocked school libraries. Today, governors boast of achievements once they have put roofs on four walls for classrooms on bare earth and everyone is expected to clap! There used to be competitive meetings among secondary schools from the AAA meets to Ionian Cup in the West and the Principals Cup in Lagos. To get zero in the next Olympics, refuse to develop these facilities.
3. Ignore proven experts in the respective areas and appoint party apparatchiks, Political cronies, children, wives and other family members of governors and presidents (incumbent or former), etc into serious positions. Pay more attention to the welfare of officials while neglecting that of the actual sportsmen and women who are the ones that can win medals.
4. Depend on good luck to run governments when other people are using scientific methods and availing themselves of all that experience and empirical evidence can give. Praying fervently for miracles after you have left undone what things you ought to have done.
5. Refuse to adjust the educational curricula so that specific sporting activities and development programmes can earn credits in secondary and tertiary institutions.
6. Allow Old stadia such as National Stadium in Lagos to rot while looking for money for new mega projects.
There are more things to do (or to leave undone) to arrive at the same end. It is time again for Nigeria to choose. Rio 2016 is closer at hand that it appears. A stitch in time …
You have said it all.
Osunde, O.D
As comprehensive as the writeup Sir. The biggest factor “Wanton embezzlement” of funds set aside to prosecute international competitions that made Nigeria that spells CORRUPTION in a way the advanced learner english dictionary or any dictionary at that, was omitted. This is just a reminder sir. Your message has made my day.
While on the surface it appears that the sombre provoking piece is a postmotem analysis of Team Nigeria performance at the just concluded Olympics, the piece actually provided a broader and sartirical dissection of the Nigerian state. All variables in the performace index as discussed bear corresponding characteristics with the bigger dynamics of our well being in the country albeit at a greater complexity. It is quite disheartening and most frustrating that some of us have already given up hope on …
it is well said but are we even sober about our performance talkmore of doing something about it.
What a wonderful piece. How I wish right minded, selfless people get to the place of governance in the Country. I pity the entire Country. But there is hope. Let us begin to do things right and differently from the way we’ve been doing it, even from here in our Faculty, in our University, because “only a mad man will keep doing the same thing the same way and be expecting a different result”. Our lost glory shall be restored.
:et us sound this to the hearings of those in authority and see weather they will were and do the right thing so that we will not continue to score zero
Let us sound this to the hearings of those in authority and see weather they will hear and do the right thing so that we will not continue to score zero
WE CAN SCORE LESS THAN ZERO this way Sir. It is when a nation appears there that it gets zero. I guess zero will still be honourable for Nigeria in future Olympics if we do not repent. If all events are to be decided by pre-qualification tournaments (as in football and basketball) one day we will be excluded from all events of the games completely. That’s a negative score. Let me congratulate Nigeria this time out in London for an achievement – that the size of the officials and government-sponsored attendees did not outstrip the number of competitors inTeam Nigeria itself. Remember the size of our contigent on the entourage of our oga to Brazil recently!!!. 2016 is another Olympic year in Brazil (Rio) !!!. I guess Nigeria will go there, if we don’t repent, to better that record set in Brazil.
Hmmh, well said, and applicable to every area of our lifes. May we all start the change we expect to see in our nation with ourselves and our immediate environment.
Little drops of water makes a mighty ocean.
Point three of your summations on how to continue scoring zero can be likened to the ways government is paying lip-service to national development through technological breakthrough. Alas, the crop of brillant and seasoned engineers that abounds among us are left in limbo… to rot while merit is sacrifice at the altar of political exigencies. What a nation of paradox!!!
Sir, I think the summary of all the points you raised is based on the Nigerian attitude of putting a square peg in a round hole, it doesn’t concern or affect me and sit down look attitude of God’s time has not come. Until all these are put aside, we can’t be there. Prof., when the right people of like minds are in those positions of authority, things will move. This is also a point for you to note that Engineering Faculty does not score zero as the Olympic team as it happened in some past years. May God direct us unto yhe right path, amen.
[…] self-interest to support home clubs. In another article, “How to get zero in Olympics”, http://oafak.com/2012/08/how-to-get-zero-in-olympics/, written only two months after that, I tried to draw the attention of readers to the fact that […]
I concur all the way on every point. The provocative style especially drove the message home. Thank you sir.
Still relevant more than a decade after