Delhi 2010 saw Nigerians demonstrate power and determination to bring back their lost glory in athletics.The first gold medal of the competition came from a little Nigerian petite dynamite Augustina Nwokolo in 48kg weightlifting who proved that size is not everything that sums to power.
Undoubtedly that great accolade brought about joy and motivation to the rest of the Nigerian contingents. According to sources the Nigeria camp was reinvigorated with power and the atmosphere was charged to greatness and the athletes vowed to perform even better than they hoped in all their fields.
Such an earlier performance is nevertheless a foundation for greater heights for any team in any competition nonetheless an international one to say the least but the hype was suddenly punctured by a peculiar but un-welcomed news of cheating.
Before the news came out,Nigeria had grabbed about 8 gold medals and a hull of other medal colours, more were expected but the zeal was fast fading away from these noble reps of our dear country.The news of the cheating made sharp headlines of all the print and electronic media. The whole world woke up with the headlines"Nigerian 100m winner fails drug test".The name Osayemi became a household name for all the wrong reasons.
A section of the media was of the opinion that the headlines was as a result of embarrassing controversies that marred the 100m race in Delhi (the real winner Sally Pearson was disqualified), others said it was because the sprinter was at the limelight of the most popular race 100m and therefore will be the subject of attention, a biter pill to swallow for Nigerians and gladdening news for Sally and the Australians.
Whatever the reasons might be for such a high profile negative publicity, Osayemi and some of the Nigerian officials should be blamed unfortunately.
The drug methylhexaneamine has just been added to the banned list and is not commonly found during regular test. Many athletics from Jamaica and India have tested positive to it recently.
Osayemi and the second Nigerian Samuel Okon tested positive to this drug. A sympathy assumption from one official was that Osayemi must have taken it for her teething problems, another teaser from Frazier(Jamaican Olympic Champion) who stated that she got hers through a tooth pain killer.
Do I buy the sympathy explanation?, yes why not? after all she is a star I have always admired, she has been on the scene for more than five years at international levels, lives abroad and trains with the "A" list sprinters. She is rated among the world top 20 in female sprinting and in top 2 in African . She has done very well in the past without any drug issue scandal.
Osayemi is not alone, in Beijing 2008,Nigerian athletes tested positive and were disgracefully dismissed from the competition.The picture was awful and the joy of competition crucified.
Before then,we had cases of the Ezenwa brothers,Chioma Ajunwa and some others, to be honest most of these patriots, I would like to call them regardless, were actually ignorant of the impact of the strange food supplements and medication they were taking in the name of pain killers and better physique.
To Osayemi especially, ignorance is not a well accepted excuse.She lives in the US where a whole lot of high profile cases of doping have been revealed.The case of Catlin, Jones and others recently caught was not kept in the dark. In fact it kept any reasonable athlete on his toes, influencing a change in attitude in athletes and making them more careful and ready to follow the rules no matter what their body say.
That lesson did not register with the likes of Okon and Osayemi, they waived it apart and thought they can get away with recklessness. May be she thought that since she lives abroad, they officials will overlook her and believe she is ok because of on and off competition testing. She was right, the mentality of many is that foreign athletes flourish that modern facilities,correct information and exposure which equals truth, determination and patriotism the virtues readily found on home based athletes but elude many having become stars.
You can fool the local officials but when it comes to international officials you may not be so wise enough to beat them.
The Nigerian officials on the other hand cannot be left off the hook easily, considering the excuse of not having any official doping program in place in the country at the moment although some quarters object to that report saying there is a program in place.Now it has become question of functionality of the program or diligence of the officials, anyway, the official report will sooner than later emerge and the truth will be known.
On the other hand, Delhi 2010 has shown that if we put the right people in the right place and show diligence we can improve and become a force to be reckon with in sports worldwide again. This year's performance is a sharp contrast with the 2006 commonwealth games where we managed to get 17 medals in all, the improvement and the number of medal so far attest to it.
As a colleague of mine rightly said, Nigerian officials "Remedy" for this epidemic crime(doping) onwards is to always invite every athlete to a camp and have them tested before any competition regardless of any excuse that might emerge from them.Any athlete that refuses to join the camp will not be allowed to compete. I sincerely agree with you here Steven.
Funding, funding , funding is another excuse from the Nigerian officials any time any day but we must not forget that a whole lot of funds have been mismanaged over and over again. Officials forget that mismanagement of these funds itself constitute the highest obstacle than any lack of funding might cause.Any funds no matter how little, should be allocated to the right priority, it is only then that we can have a proper doping program, practically functional and ready to avert embarrassment of this nature to all Nigerians home and abroad.
All these failures are direct consequences to lackluster attitude towards discipline,integrity, and patriotism of the highest standard, but the question remains when and what will Nigerian officials and athletes learn from all these.
Sadly as Augustina Nwokolo's Gold medal brought joy,life,brightness and motivation to Team Nigeria, so has Osayemi drug failure brought tears, shame, embarrassment and controversy to Team Nigeria as well.
As I blog along 10 Gold medals have been won by Nigeria (Hurray!!!)just a day before the end of the competition but I bet it would have been more, Nigerians say no to doping and show the world that you are hard working world class athletes any day . Remember our great men and women, Faliliat,Mary Onyali,Innocent Ogbunike, Chidi Imoh, Rufina Ubah, Beatrice Utondu, Christy Okpara-Thomson, Sunday Uti, late Dele udoh and many others, they did well without doping and the world also respect them. Think Twice.
Nigerians should be aware that any negative thing that happens in Nigeria or to Nigerians in competitions always make great headlines, the reasons I do not know.Yesterday an Indian failed a drug test and it took several hours before it was even mentioned not to to talk about her name being revealed.
That was in total contrast to the Nigerian cases where the A sample results were announced with "vengeance" almost immediately it is discovered by the Testers.
Do not trash your hard earned name, at least in sports Nigeria has a name to be proud of.I pray that more positive results will not emerge from Nigerians as the games closes tomorrow.
-Patrick Ebuzor-main blogger
