Nigeria’s Only Individual Olympic Gold Medallist Rues Country’s Showing In Paris

Nigeria’s only individual Olympic gold medallist rues country’s showing in Paris

By Aremu Adebayo

Nigeria’s first Olympic gold medallist, Chioma Ajunwa, has bemoaned Team Nigeria’s performance at the just concluded Olympic games in Paris, France.

Our correspondent reports that Nigeria’s 19th appearance at the Olympic Games ended with the country winning no medal, despite featuring 88 athletes in 12 sports. The performance was reminiscent of the team’s performance at the London 2012 Olympic Games, where the country won no medal.

Reacting to Team Nigeria’s performance at the games, Anjuwa, during an appearance on Arise News on Monday, described the performance in Paris as ‘unfortunate’.

She said, “It’s quite disheartening that every year Nigeria tells this kind of story. If you could remember, after the last Olympics before this, it was still the same thing.

“You know they will keep on telling us. Oh, let them go back to the drawing board, the drawing board we never see, and we don’t know how to draw on the board.

“It’s quite unfortunate that we lost the whole chance. And the athletes wasted their time, their energy, and their own personal resources.

“It is quite unfortunate that Nigeria spent so much, but that one is not my business because we don’t spend that money when we are supposed to spend it.”

Furthermore, Anjuwa pointed out that Nigeria doesn’t go to the Olympics to compete for medals but rather to “steal” them.

“We never planted; what we saw there is exactly what we cultivated. You cannot go to another person’s farm when you didn’t do so on your own. Otherwise, they will call you a thief,” Anjuwa said.

“Every year, Nigeria aims to go and ‘thief’ medals.” Immediately after the closure of the Olympics, every country will go back and start planning because it’s a four-year event. They’ve given every country the time to plan for their athletes to train, but here we go back to our comfort zone, celebrate the money we made there, and invest in personal things instead of planning on how the country will move forward.

“I cried like a baby when Ofili finally came in sixth and our highest medal hope Tobi Amusan missed [going to the final].”

Anjuwa also called for an overhaul of the sports departments and a stop to the recycling of administrators.

Her words: “One thing the Federal Government should do is overhaul the sports departments; they should stop recycling the old administrators who don’t know what they are doing. When you put someone who knows his or her onion, we won’t be speaking in this manner.

“When you put somebody who has the love and passion of the office where he is working, he or she will know exactly what to do at any time. Our problem is that we’re using those who don’t know what sports are or have done sports in their lives.”

Following Nigeria’s dismal performance at the games, Minister of Sports, John Enoh, in a statement on X, apologised to Nigerians and promised a review of performances of athletes, coaches, and administrative staff.

“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 8th),” the statement reads in part.