Sport can create hope, where once there was only despair. It is more powerful than governments in breaking down racial barriers. It laughs in the face of all types of discrimination—Nelson Mandela
The Olympic Games, which kicked off in Rio yesterday, have been marred by controversy for the Nigerian team. In the last few weeks, Nigerian athletes have bemoaned their treatment by the nation’s sports authorities. From Nigerian athlete Regina George’s plea for funds to attend the Olympics to the Nigerian under-23 national football team (Dream Team VI) being stranded in America due to air charter problems, the Nigerian team has not had it easy. The aforementioned episodes are stains on the country’s reputation and they underscore the government’s disregard for the games, its athletes and sports generally. Unfortunately, the president is missing an important opportunity to unite an increasingly divided country through a tried and tested means, sports.
Nelson Mandela understood the power of sports as he phoned the Captain of the 1995 South African Rugby Team regularly, to ensure that the players were in the right frame of mind and had all that they needed to win. The phone calls told of Mandela’s desire for the Springboks to win for all South Africans. On June 24, 1995, Mandela and South Africa were triumphant. And he may just have saved a country by sporting the green and gold jersey with a prancing antelope on the left breast. The Springboks were dear to the hearts of South Africa’s white Afrikaners and loathed by the nation’s black majority. By donning their emblem, Mandela symbolically reconciled a nation fractured and badly damaged by racism and hatred. “Sport has the power to change the world, it has the power to inspire, it has the power to unite people in a way that little else does,” Nelson Mandela said in retrospect, 5 years after the 1995 Rugby World Cup.
Nigeria today has many divisions. As voices in the South East of the country push for secession, militants in the Niger Delta are crippling the economy’s oil production. Meanwhile in the North Eastern Nigeria Boko Haram terrorists kill innocent Nigerians. In the central regions Fulani herdsmen kill farmers. Political problems in the country are compounded by economic hardship as the country is experiences a third consecutive quarter of negative GDP growth. Some may argue that the country has more pressing priorities to attend to than sport they underestimate the uniting power of athletics.
The performance of the Nigerian football team in the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta, when Nigeria famously defeated Brazil (the best team at the time) and went on to win the tournament, is the pride of many Nigerians till this day. When Nigeria succeeds in an international tournament, we suddenly do not identify by ethnicity, Igbo, Yoruba or Hausa, neither do secessionists identify as Biafrans. In that moment we are all Nigerians. Even Boko Haram was believed to have congratulated the Nigerian football team after their triumph at the 2013 African Cup of Nations. In a period of grave challenges such as this, the people need a cause they can rally behind and Buhari may have missed this important opportunity. The negligent attitude of the government towards the games have distracted and demoralised our competitors even before the games begin.
Despite the obstacles they faced, the Dream Team VI were successful against Japan in their opening match, yesterday, and may succeed in fostering unity and cohesion in spite of the government.
The unifying power of sports is one of the reasons why world powers like the USA and China spend so much to ensure that they are represented impressively on the world stage. The Nigerian government will do well to internalise the importance of sports for the country, especially at a divisive juncture in its history. The government needs to show a commitment, not only during the games but also in the build up to these international events,to ensure that its competitors have access to world-class facilities and are adequately prepared for the tournaments.
