Poor Rio preparation, a big shame!
Nigeria is a very interesting country. We do so many things
differently and expect the best results. While people make deliberate
efforts, push and pull to get results in various endeavours, we relax
and expect to compete keenly and do better than such people all because
we are Nigerians! It is so bad that we also create Nigerian time,
Nigerian English and so on. It beats me.
Sometimes, through stroke of luck and individual efforts, Nigeria
achieves some great results and the administrators capitalise on this to
claim credit for what they knew nothing about. Sad enough, we again do
not learn from past mistakes.
At the London 2012 Olympic Games, expectations were high but Team
Nigeria returned home with no single medal. The then Minister, Bolaji
Abdulahi, stated that the preparations for Brazil would start
immediately. Four years after, the preparations for the Rio Olympics are
yet to begin in concrete terms, and this has been the case for many
years. It is a shame. The Rio 2016 Olympic Games start on August 5 in
Brazil. Some events will actually start on August 2nd, three days before
the opening ceremony of the fiesta.
It was expected that the poor run at the last games would be a good
reason for the country to start preparation early for Rio. The Sports
Minister, Solomon Dalung, attributed the delay to money problems among
other things as athletes are yet to embark on the training tours just
five weeks to the competition.
First, it is crucial to evaluate the opinions of some experienced
people also speaking on the forthcoming games in Rio. Segun Toriola is a
Table Tennis player who is going for the games for the seventh
consecutive time. His appearance at the Games is a historic one not only
for Nigeria but for Africa.
I have known him for over 15 years and he has never spoken against
sports authorities in the country. However, just a few days back, a
frustrated Toriola was forced to cry out over the poor preparation of
the country for the forthcoming Olympic Games.
He noted that it was sad that there were no concrete preparations and
as things were, the country could be travelling for the games just on a
jamboree rather than competing with other top nations of the world. “We
cannot continue like this. We should always strive to do things better.
Newtelegraphonline
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