By Eugene Upah
With a population base of over 180 million and historically the gene pool of the greatest black athletes in the world, Nigeria ought to be a dominant force and a powerhouse in the world of sports.
Unfortunately, the country has performed poorly in the Olympic Games and other international competitions, especially in recent years. This is because Nigeria has no standard program in place to discover athletes at a young age; train, monitor, properly care for and groom them into professional stars like their contemporaries. As a result, the few good athletes representing Nigeria compete for too long with deteriorating performances while there are no mechanisms in place to produce their replacements from the millions of youths in Nigerian elementary and secondary schools. Properly organized mass participation of youths in sports is the solution to the problem and the only way to guarantee the sustainable production of world champion athletes for Nigeria on a continuous basis.
In countries like USA & Jamaica for instance, where their sportsmen & women have shown exemplary performances at the international sporting arena, all their star athletes are identified at the elementary school level, trained and exposed to numerous competitions at the high school level, become world stars at the university level, and turn professionals after their university career. A system like this encourages mass participation of the youths in sports, starting at the elementary school level, must provide the appropriate lure and obvious incentives for those who take their participation to the next level. In the USA and equally applicable to Nigeria, the rewards are a secondary school scholarship, a university education on scholarship at home or overseas, training grants for star athletes, opportunity to win medals in world competitions, multi-million dollar professional sports career, becoming an Olympic medalist, world celebrity status, and the opportunity to travel to various countries of the world.
There must be a program designed to identify talent at an early age, develop, train, monitor and cater for these young athletes on a continuous basis after they are discovered. Like Jamaica’s Shelly-Ann Fraizer Pryce & United States's Alysia Montano, Nigeria’s Chioma Ajunwa, Blessing Okagbare, Patience Okon George & Edidiong Ofonime are a few successful athletes from the schools sports system who have all made their countries proud in international outings.
The next phase of the program is the organization of several sports competitions that will provide a regular forum for the discovered athletes to compete amongst themselves where their talents are explored & harnessed.
This two part program is designed to encourage mass participation in sports at the elementary and secondary schools, with the single goal of identifying talent and producing stars on a continuous basis which is the only panacea for any sports development program to excel.
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