The Sports Minister John Enoh has a clear-cut task, writes Danladi Bako Without any modicum of doubt, Nigeria’s outing at the 2024 Paris Olympics which ended on Sunday was a disaster waiting to happen . The Minister of Sports John Owan Enoh has duly apologized to us for this untenable and unacceptable performance. While tendering the ministry’s apology Senator Enoh enumerated the challenges he met on ground on assumption of office a year to the Paris games , while so many other serious countries had already met qualifying times for the track and field events, embarked on training tours of their basketball, volleyball, swimming teams.
He listed the lack of adequate preparation for training camps by the Federations among other issues. So where was the optimism about “doing well” coming from ? It’s not the minister’s duty to do magic one year to an event smaller countries had been drilling and training their athletes for 10 years before now. While we boast of 200 million citizens we watched St Lucia, a country of 180,000 people win the female 400 metres gold, small Botswana of the southern part of Africa won the male 200 metres gold and the male 4×400 metres relay silver.
Akane Simbine led South Africa to win the male 4×100 metres relay silver. Kenya’s beautiful young Faith Kipyegon won her third successive Olympic games 1500 metres gold from Brazil, Tokyo and now Paris while my dear Nigeria’s gold medal haul still stands at two. Clearly something has gone wron.