Paris Olympics: African Countries Continue to Fail Their Athletes

The overall loss at the Olympics however, runs a lot deeper than team countries returning home without a medal — many of the reasons behind the lack of medals speak to a long, unaddressed flaw in the sports ecosystem. Nigeria for instance, found itself in the spotlight for various reasons, many of them embarrassing and revealing of the unchanging rot in the country’s sports federations. There was the case of Nigerian sprinter Favour Ofili who wasn’t entered for the 100m race, a category in which she would have excelled had her name been included. Although Ofili decided to press on, running the 200m, she came second in the semi-final and sixth in the final race. Perhaps, the most harrowing part of Ofili’s story is that as she left the tracks, she had no supporters, no one from the Nigerian sports committee at least, who were there to cheer her on.

In a statement released on his personal X account, Nigeria’s Minister of Sports Development John Owan Enoh acknowledged that overall performance and preparation could have been better.

“It obviously fell short of our objectives, expectations, and hopes of Nigerians. I must apologize to our compatriots and reflect on what went wrong while looking forward to the Paralympic Games, Paris 2024 (August 28 - September 8),” he wrote.

Enoh claimed that preparations for the Olympics hadn’t started when he resumed office in August 2023 — blaming the poor performance and other institutional failures on this lack of adequate prep time.

He continued, “In the true Nigerian spirit, it was our view that we should spare no effort to sustain the international sports image of our country. Our target was to re-enact the Atlanta 1996 performance or even improve on it. To this end, we embarked on a progressive approach to drive forward the performance of our athletes and coaches. In my first week in office, I requested all National Sports Federations to furnish me with plans and programs. I also embarked on a nationwide inspection of our sports facilities.”

Enoh ended his statement with the promise that an extensive evaluation of the athletes, their readiness, injuries and medical history will be launched to comprehensively understand what went wrong. “As a responsible [organization], we have swung into a review process. The role of coaches and administrative staff will also be examined.”

Winning away from home

In an interesting twist, African athletes from Nigeria and Kenya who competed for other countries managed to snag medals in their respective competitions. Hammer thrower Anette Nneka Echikunwoke, who represented Nigeria at the 2020 Olympics, won a silver medal for her birth country, the U.S. Her dreams of competing at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were cut short because the Athletics Federation of Nigeria failed to conduct mandatory tests, which ruled her and nine others out of the competition. Although Kenya’s Winifred Yavi, who competed for Bahrain and won gold in the 3000m women's steeplechase, decided to switch due to the high level of competition at the trials, Kenyan athletes have complained and threatened boycotts over the unfit state of sports facilities. Nigerian-born Salwa Eid Naser (born Ebelechukwu Agbapuonwu) who won silver in the women's 400m, also competed for Bahrain after making a switch in 2014. Nigerian-born Yemisi Ogunleye also won gold while competing for Germany in the women’s shot put event, making history in the process.

The deeply seated failure on the grassroots level that has seeped into the international stage calls for serious and urgent action. Peter Obi, a former presidential candidate in the 2023 Nigerian elections, in a statement released on his X account, condemned “The rascality and recklessness that has continued to [characterize] leadership in our nation in nearly every department,” adding that “The general impression that has come to stick is the one that portrays our country as a joke, even on the international stage.”

Should this recklessness continue, African countries could see fewer athletes willing to put themselves on the line and commit to representing countries that can let them down — often in the smallest but most significant ways.