#Moodyshegsblog update: Okagbare, a victim of Russian politics - Ogba

President of the Athletic Federation of
Nigeria, Solomon Ogba, reveals to
KAZEEM BUSARI Nigeria's plans to be
among the best in the sport
Will there be any official reception for
Blessing Okagbare after her feat at the
IAAF World Championships?
I'm not sure if the Ministry of Sport has
any plan to honour Okagbare. I don't
know if there's any plan for a
reception. It could be that the ministry
wants to wait for her to finish with the
IAAF Diamond League in Zurich and in
Brussels next week. She's competing in
two finals, that is, the long jump and
the 100m; she has technically pulled
out of the 200m contest. I know the
Delta State Government is planning an
official reception for Okagbare and
Regina George and a few of them. But
Delta will not do anything until the
Federal Government has officially
received the athletes.
It appears there's a special
concentration of funds on Okagbare
It's not true that there is more
concentration on Okagbare than the
other athletes. We only gave her a
training grant for being in the world's
top ten, and at that time, we gave
grants to three other athletes. But she
gets a lot of support from the Delta
State government.
Can't there be up to four athletes like
her?
We cannot have four Okagbares at a
time, athletes like that come once in an
era. I don't think it's fair when people
compare her with the likes of Mary
Onyali and Gloria Alozie. In two years,
Okagbare has run under 11 seconds
about nine times. All other athletes she
has been compared with were never
this consistent. Onyali ran under 11
seconds once and Alozie ran under 11
seconds once in her entire career. No
other person has run under 11 seconds
since then. If we have four athletes
running 10 seconds at a time, we'll
compete well with the USA team. But
we're doing things to have athletes
who can support her by running 10
seconds and complement her.
What went wrong for Nigeria at the
World Championships in Moscow?
The IAAF technical team tipped
Okagbare for three medals - in the
100m, 200m and the long jump - but
the politics of the game robbed her of
the medal in the 100m.
The ideal schedule at competitions is to
have the 100m and 200m in the first
three days of the world championships,
and then the long jump events hold
about three days to the end of the
competition. But the Russians wanted
to win the long jump hence they played
the politics and brought long jump in
between the 100m timetable.
Eventually, the Russian lady, who had
been jumping seven metres this year,
did not win the event. If the politics had
affected an American athlete, they
wouldn't have allowed the Russians to
have their way. But we don't have
anybody in the IAAF council to fight for
us so we take whatever is dished out
to us.
Our men were nowhere near finishing
strong?
We're trying to boost the athletics
squad, especially in the men's
category. We've been having problems
with the men. Since the exit of Olusoji
Fasuba, who was the only star in his
time, we've not had anyone to fill his
shoes. We've been struggling since
then. One of the things we're doing to
solve this problem is to have truly
young athletes compete in the junior
competitions. In the junior team that is
currently in Mauritius for the African
Junior Championships, we reduced the
athletes from 35 to 26 because of age
cheat problems.
We discovered that some of them had
falsified their ages. Some athletes
could be 34 years old but were
claiming to be 20. In athletics, there are
some training regimes meant
specifically for youths, so if a full
grown man undergoes such training, it
would be counterproductive. Some
athletes discovered during the National
Sports Festival in 2004 are still
claiming to be juniors. We removed
these athletes from the team because
we're not desperate to win at the
championships. I believe it is better not
to win at the junior level than nurture a
team that will not yield anything in the
future. I'd rather have a junior run
11.70 now and lose and hope to have
him run 11.10 in the next two years.
It is possible to have some of the age
cheats winning at the junior level, but
that will give us false hope that we're
improving. In two years, we'll get the
result of the decisions we're taking
now. Also, the high-performance
centre being set up in Abuja and the
IAAF programme in Port Harcourt will
definitely yield results in the next two
years.
Any plan to have Nigerian-born
athletes abroad in the team?
We're into an aggressive recruitment of
Nigerian athletes anywhere in the
world. I'm not bothered by people in
the United Kingdom, if they come fine.
I'm focussing on athletes in America.
Some of them have been contacting
me and showing interest in competing
for Nigeria. There's a 19-year old
running 11.40, which I think is a good
time. If I have three athletes running
11.10 complementing Okagbare, we'll
win medals any day, whether America
or Jamaica are in that relay.
The world junior champion is Nigerian-
born Jennifer Madu, just as the current
USA junior 100m champion, Morolake
Akinosun. There's also Ahmed
Sulaiman who jumped 7.91 in the long
jump this year in his college. He also
jumped 16.27 in the triple jump. He is
likely going to jump eight metres in the
long jump and 17 in the triple jump.
There are so many of them we're trying
to get back. I believe America is still the
best in track and field hence the reason
I'm focussing on the Nigerian-born
athletes there. The Jamaicans are up
there, but they can't compare with the
number of American athletes in the
world's top 200.
I think Okagbare's feat on the world
stage has spurred many Nigerian-born
athletes in the Diaspora to reconsider
competing for Nigeria. They now know
that we're can be up there with a little
push.
America and Britain can recruit any
athlete from anywhere in the world to
run for them. We can also recruit
athletes. Samuel Samson, running for
Qatar, was recruited right from under
our noses in Nigeria.
The Nigerian constitutions says if any
of your parents, grandparents or great
grandparents was born on or before
1960, then you're a Nigerian. America
has a lot of them running 10 seconds
and we're working on having them run
for Nigeria.
Any training grants for athletes?
There's money in athletics but our
athletes must show they deserve to get
it. They don't need to wait for grants
from the government before they train.
You first invest in yourself before
others will bring their money to help
you. Any athlete who blames Nigeria
for his woes is a lazy one. Nigeria
cannot make you what you want to be;
you have to desire to be a professional
athlete and work towards it.
What's the plan for the grassroots?
We've succeeded in organising the
under-18 athletics championships, now
we're planning for the under-15. If the
school sports are running the way we
expect, we can reintroduce the
under-13 and hope to get talent from
the secondary schools.
For the Commonwealth Games
We're making arrangements to have
only athletes that meet the standard to
compete for Nigeria. If we have
impressive results at the national trials,
these further challenge the foreign-
based athletes to do more in order not
to be beaten by their counterparts at
home.
If what we're trying to do work out, I
think we can win seven gold medals at
the 2014 Commonwealth Games. We're
trying to get the private sector to
support our programmes geared
towards athletes' improvement before
the Games.