One of Nigeria’s finest quarter miler of all time , Udo Obong Enefiok has given a first hand information and reason Nigeria Athletes to the 2024 World U20 Athletics Championship in Lima returned with no medal as the curtain drawn on the championship over the weekend.
The Olympics medalists described this time as about the worst time to be an Athlete living in Nigeria.
The accomplished former Athlete encapsulated everything that went wrong for the team before and during the competition in terms of preparation and motivation.
He exposed the rot which forms the foundation for the team’s monumental failure in the championship where fellow African shine like a diamond in five paragraphs under the heading :
X-Raying Nigeria’s Participation In The World U20 Athletics Championship, Enjoy the excerpts as written by Enefiok Udo-Obong.
This is perhaps the worst time to be a Nigerian athlete, especially living in Nigeria.
I was opportuned to see from a close distance the Nigerian Team to the world u20 athletics championships in Peru.
While all the news media would lament the medal less outing, can we take a moment to x-ray the team and its preparations and motivations ?
As someone that was once an athlete, especially homebased, though i have no involvement in the team any longer, i am pained by what i am seeing. For clarity of purpose I would number my paragraphs.
Late invites. No camping. No preparations. The athletes were unsure of if and when they would travel to the competition. A night before the departure to Peru (a journey that would take almost 20 hours) the athletes through their respective coaches received information that their flights are the next day from Abuja. Young athletes from Akure, Lagos, Uyo , Asaba etc started struggling to get to Abuja by night bus or borrowing money to hope to make the morning flight to Abuja. I know an athlete who borrowed 230,000 (this figure would be important soon) to pay for her flight to Abuja as we know how flights are now.
The flight to Peru was also a problem. In a bid to get the cheapest tickets, the athletes were booked in a twisting journey that involved 3 stop overs and long tiring airport transfers. Not only was this tiring and contributing to their lack of recovery for competition and jet lag they also had the problem of not getting a flight back home after the competition. While the whole countries have departed as at 1st September because the event ended 31st September, Nigerian team due to the flight booking would have to move out of the World Athletics hotel and rent a cheap hotel to stay for three more days as their flight would be 3rd September. A flight arrangement that would require them to spend almost 20 hours in transit in Turkey. They are not due to arrive in Nigeria till the evening of the 5th September, five days after the event has ended.
And note, there is no allowance or compensation for that. In fact their allowance is a thing of dispute. None was given to the home based athletes and coaches as at their departure time and rumours that they would be paid in naira when they return, a sum of 100,000 naira each.
This sum (about 60 usd) is an embarrassment for young kids that left their homes in a hurry. Remember that 230k flight money borrowed would not even be available to be paid back.
To rub insult to injury, their colleagues that came from US to join them in competition were said to have been paid an allowance of 300USD each. ( That is about N480,000. Close to 5 times what the home based would get)
Then talk about appearance. That is where the shame extends to all of us. Nigerian athletes were the only ones wearing school clothing and other individual clothes. Just a track suit and one competition vest was given them. No travelling bag or home wear so they never looked uniform. In fact even a back pack to carry their shoes and spikes was not given. They were told that the organisers would give them souvenir back packs and they should use that for competition. The way other teams like South Africa, Australia, Kenya etc appeared and dressed is enough to kill the morale of any Nigerian athlete.
So while we may see the athletes try in vain to make the country proud by running as hard as they can, the motivation is not just there as the administrators treat these athletes so bad in a way they would never treat their own children.
They act and speak as if they are doing the athletes a favour.
Who is Enefiok?
Udo-Obong Enifiok won the gold medal in 4 x 400 meter relay at the 2000 Summer Olympics. He also won the bronze medal in the same event at the 2004 Summer Olympics. In 2000, he was voted Sportsman of the Year, and won the Dele Udo prize for sporting excellence. He has also won the national championships on three occasions, and is a six-time medalist at a national sports festival in Nigeria.
Udo-Obong was nominated as one of the 50 most influential young Africans by African Digest in 2002, where he also captained Team Nigeria to the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, UK.
Udo-Obong is a recipient of the Akwa Ibom State Honours Roll, and is also a recipient of the Certificate of Award for Outstanding Contribution to Sports Development in Nigeria.
Udo-Obong is a former board member of the Nigerian Olympic Committee, and chairperson of the Athletes’ Commission. He is also a member of the Athletes’ Commission of the Association of National Olympic Committees in Africa (ANOCA), a member of the Nigerian Olympians Association, a member of the advisory board of the Atlanta 1996 training centre in Atlanta, a member of the Institute of Registered Exercise Professionals, a member of the international Fitness Association (IFA), And the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), as well as other international bodies. He is also the president of the Association of Fitness Practitioners in Nigeria.
Udo-Obong is the author of the motivational book, “The Silver Lining: Turning Major Setbacks into Major Victories”, which has sold over 25,000 copies across the nation.
Udo-Obong was recently appointed a facilitator by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to train athletes in the Athletes Career Program (ACP), a program designed to “help athletes to transition into a productive life after their sporting careers”.
He is the author of the following books. “The Silver Lining-Turning Major setbacks into Major Victories” (2006),
The Goldmine-unleashing the Champion in you” (2021) and “In the Long Run-The
Great Race Fiasco” (2023)
