A world athletics gala without Nigerian athletes

Today, as the world of athletics focuses on who will become the 2009 Athlete of the Year (male and female) at the prestigious World Athletics Gala taking place in Monaco, the sorry state of athletics in Nigeria comes to the fore once again.

The golden years

Over the years, a country that has raised notable athletes like Innocent Egbunike, Falilat Ogunkoya, Mary Onyali-Omagbemi, Chidi Imoh, the Ezinwa brothers, Yusuf Alli and other athletes who favourably competed against their counterparts all over the world, has slipped out of global athletics reckoning.

This decline even prompted the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) President, Lamine Diack, to lament on the decline of athletics in Nigeria when he met with the Director General of the National Sports Commission (NSC), Patrick Ekeji during the World Championships earlier this year. He noted that though Nigeria had great potential in track and field, there are no avenues for proper development.

Ethiopia’s example

While Nigeria has fallen behind, the so-called smaller African countries, particularly those from the east region, have been able to hold their own against the best the world has to offer. These athletes have over the years maintained dominance of the long distance races, thereby overtaking the “Giant of Africa” by a wide gap.

Since the inception of the awards in 1988, some of the African athletes who have clinched the award are: Noureddine Morceli (Algeria) in 1994, Haile Gebrselassie (Ethiopia) in 1998, and Hicham El Guerrouj (Morocco), who receive the award in 2001, 2002 and 2003. Kenenisa Bekele (Ethiopia) won the award in 2004 and 2005 while the most recent winner is Meseret Defar (Ethiopia) who was selected in 2007.

Both Tirunesh Dibaba, (also from Ethiopia) and Bekele were nominated last year, though the World’s fastest man, Usain Bolt and Pole Vault athlete, Yelena Isinbayeva, eventually clinched the awards.

This year’s finalists

The only African who made the shortlist list this year is Bekele and that is hardly surprising, considering his feat in winning both the 5,000m and 10,000m events at the World Championships, which took place in Berlin in August this year. He now holds the record as the first man ever to win the two events at a World Championship.

The 27-year-old also won the 5,000/10,000m double at the Beijing Olympics last year.

Other finalists for this year’s award include Usain Bolt (Jamaica), Tyson Gay (USA), Steven Hooker (Australia) and Andreas Thorkildsen (Norway) in the men’s category while Yelena Isinbayeva (Russia), Sanya Richards (USA), Valerie Vili (New Zealand), Blanka Vlasic (Croatia) and Anita Wlodarczyk (Poland) make up finalists in the women’s category.

A reflection of the nation

Reacting to this development, an instructor with the International Amateur Athletics Federation, Rotimi Obajimi, said that the present state of athletics is synonymous with the present state of Nigeria as a whole.

“We are in a state of transition that doesn’t seem to have an end and our problem has to do with the organisation of our federation and the development of our athletes. For example, the IAAF has a development programme for countries called the Basic Level Course yet we’ve not had one for the past eight years.

“Who are the people that will train the athletes? It’s about putting the right people in the right place and not only that, they should be able to structure what they want to do. About six years ago I had this same conversation with Dan Ngerem (the former president of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria) when he was coming on board but it fell on deaf ears. It shouldn’t be all about competition, competition, competition but development; If not, seven years from now, we will still be having this same conversation.”