2011: Worst Year For Sports in Nigeria

Sports enthusiasts in Nigeria would readily agree with any prophet of doom who revealed bad vibes for the country’s sports in the year ahead.

This is because the out-going year was a miserable one for the sports industry in Nigeria. Failures kept rolling in from every aspect and the big question that still remains to be answered by those in authority is ‘what happened to the billions of naira budget for sports development?’ The big shots at the National Sports Commission are having a hard time convincing the National Assembly how money was spent in the outgoing year.

FOOTBALL

Football was the worst hit hence the apprehension by the lawmakers.

The year started promisingly, when the Flying Eagles won the African Under-20 Championship in South Africa. The team coached by John Obuh looked good to be champions at the FIFA Under-20 World Cup in Colombia, but the team was stopped in the quarterfinal by France. Obuh however, was the star attraction with his choice of fashion at the tournament.

Back home the Eagles under Samson Siasia were battling to earn a place in the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations. There was so much hope as the Eagles crushed a visiting under-strength Argentina team 4-0 in Abuja and this made Nigeria football


Siasia disappointed after the Nation's Cup ouster
fans to conclude that the Nations Cup qualifiers against Ethiopia will be a stroll in the park.

But shockingly the Eagles forced Ethiopia to a 2-2 draw; a last minute header by Yobo saved the day, and that dented Nigeria’s chances of going to the Nations Cup.

The national women team, the Super Falcons did not fare any better. They failed to beat their Ghanaian counterparts to book a ticket to the All Africa Games in Maputo, Mozambique. The Falcons were the defending champions from the 2007 games and they had never missed the Games since women football was introduced in 2003.

In August, the main pain arrived when coach Siasia failed to beat Guinea to secure a ticket to the Nations Cup. Painful was the word as the Eagles squandered a 2-1 lead much to the amazement of Nigerian fans. They called for the sacking of coach Siasia, a man who had ridden on popularity with the fans to secure the job. The Nigeria Football Federation predictably pushed him off the cliff to save their own neck. siasia before then had been highly rated by nigerians due to his under-20 and under-23 achivements but the super eagles job will remain the lowest point in his career

And to the Falcons, the super falcons rubbed salt into injury when they failed to hold their nerve in Yaounde, Cameroon in a crucial Olympics qualifier against their Cameroon counterparts. It was the first time the Nigerian women will not be going to the Olympics.

And it was not so shocking in November when the national under-23 team also crashed out of the Olympics. Theirs was a disaster waiting to happen as coach Austin Eguaveon failed to plan well. He had made foreign-based players the core of his team, but their clubs refused to release them for the qualification tournament in Morocco.

Eguaveon fell back on the home-based players he never had a shade of confidence in. Nigeria lost two games in a row and they were out of the picture. Eguaveon threw in the towel on return.

The local league, which held the record of the longest league in the world came to an end with Dolphin Football Club of Port Harcourt emerging championships.

This was much of a relief to followers of the league who had to cope with a power struggle between Davidson Owumi and Rumsey Victor Baribote who eventually took the reigns of the league. During the struggle for control a multi-million Naira sponsorship deal signed with MTN was lost. However, there seems to be a ray of hope for the sport in the new year.

ATHLETICS

Nigeria’s second major sport did not fare any better. Nigerian athletes to the World Championships in Daegu, South Korea failed to win a medal, however, this did not come as a surprise to athletics watchers. For them Nigerian athletics is in doldrums and in need of resuscitation.

But at the All Africa Games in Maputo, Nigerian athletes lifted the nation and athletics federation’s president Solomon Ogba called for the early release of funds to start his Olympics preparation, but what he got was the death of the federation’s technical director, Sunday Bada.

Bada died on December 12 after meeting with the president in Abuja the previous week to plan for the athletes camping.

It was a death that shocked the nation as Bada was hale and hearty that evening of his demise.

OTHER SPORTS

Basketball was another sport that had a sprinkle of activity. The Nigeria Basketball federation was glad to have contributed to the gold medal haul of Nigeria at the All Africa Games. The Federation also successfully ran the super eight league for men and women. But the sore point of the season was when the Nigeria under-16 girls qualified for the World Championship in Chile, but the young lads could not make the tournament because there was no funds.

Other sports like tennis, table tennis, wrestling, weight lifting among others witnessed little or no activity as the country fared poorly where there were events. There was no sports in Nigeria in the 2011 sporting calendar.

ADMINISTRATION

The administration of sports in the country did not fair better as three ministers in one year paints a picture of instability. The instability in the administration of sports in the country makes it almost impossible to set targets, and there were none.