11/08/2024
***NIGERIAN ATHLETES ARE ON THEIR OWN***
By D**e Chukwumereije
PURPOSE
This picture was taken 25 years ago. I was 20, and angling to take my school – University of Abuja – to NUGA Games. This picture was taken at the regional qualifiers that held that year, 1999, in Maiduguri. In truth, I wasn’t fighting fit. But I qualified at Maiduguri and went on to Kaduna for NUGA, where I lost in the quarter finals.
A conversation with my younger brother, Yaga – 2003 National champion, 2007 African champion, and 2008 Olympic bronze medallist – sparked this memory.
My own career was nowhere as illustrious. You see? I had the disadvantage of going to a University that didn’t even go to NUGA at all, till my 4th year. So I missed out on active competition for those years, and became rusty. Still, being the 4th child – coming behind 3 older ones who all, in their own time, became National Champions – I knew I had to go there and try. So, after NUGA, I struck out for the National Sports Festival. And that was where I had my firsthand experience of what Nigerian athletes go through.
I made the Abuja contingent. We trained at Old Parade Ground. Those who had come from outside Abuja also slept there. These were national athletes, sleeping on the floor.
When it was time to go to Bauchi, we crowded into a small danfo. We didn’t make it there in one day. That transit night, I folded myself into a small ball so I could fit unto the seat of a broken desk, discarded under a tree. This was where I slept.
In Bauchi, our ‘athletes camp’ was a dilapidated classroom. We all slept on the floor through the whole competition. This was a competition for Nigeria’s elite athletes.
I made it all the way to the final, where in the second round I took a direct punch to the face. (In Taekwondo, punches to the face are not allowed.) My corner coach took a look at my face and decided to throw in the towel. I went straight to the clinic. The punch had cracked one of my molars and slighted indented my