Sports as part of education
Barring Tobi Amusan, who broke records, and other women who wore Nigeria’s colors at the just concluded World Athletics Championships and the Commonwealth Games that followed days later, it would have been just another uncelebrated performance by Nigeria’s athletes. Not that the contingents have returned empty-handed, but recent history has left Nigerians at home more worried than waiting endlessly for lower-tier medals that rarely come in trickles.
The World Athletics Championships, held in Oregon, USA, is the World Athletics Championships. Therefore, whoever stands highest on the podium not only gets their nation’s anthem sung, but is also recognized as a world champion. That’s why no Nigerian was offended at having kept watch to not only witness Amusan smash African and world records but, even more impressively, win gold in the women’s 100m hurdles for two consecutive nights. She became the first Nigerian to become a world record holder and world champion. My thoughts went back to another woman, Chioma Ajunwa, who became Nigeria’s first ever Olympic gold medalist. The women’s story became clearer when Ese Brume won the silver medal in the women’s long jump and finished fourth in the women’s 4x100m relay, but not without setting a new African record.
The women’s winning streak over men continued at the multisport Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. Amusan, Brume and the women’s 4x100m relay quartet all broke new games and continental records. This Commonwealth Games, which was the 22nd edition, was Nigeria’s best in history with 35 medals won, 12 of which were gold, all won by women in various sports. No better time to be a Nigerian woman! In fact, since 2007, it’s been stories about the nation waiting for Blessing Okagbare and other women to spare us our blushes when we return annoyed from global gatherings. I remember the Super Falcons qualified for the Women’s World Championship while the Super Eagles didn’t.
The success of our women once again shatters the myth that women lose their femininity in sport. Ask Mary Onyali or Serena Williams. Women in sports can still be beautiful and raise a family.
Amusan’s victory in Oregon, in particular, drew attention to what a nation can achieve when it invests in girls. No society can reach its optimal potential when only half of its population is empowered. It’s like putting yourself at a disadvantage by going to a game with half your squad, and history has also shown us that investing in the girl child is the cheapest form of investing. For one thing, an educated woman educates her children easily and for free. This is evident even that the leading nations of the world have greatly empowered their women that it is no longer news to see women in the highest spheres of life. You are successful in all areas.
It was the gender triumphs that got us talking in Nigeria, but looking more closely at the medal tally of Oregon, Birmingham or any other global sporting competition before it, it was always the case that nations invested most in education at the tables. Education and sport cannot be separated. Sport is a part of education. Many of our athletes, including Amusan, enjoy overseas athletic scholarships that give them the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.
Nigeria will not rise above what it is doing now in sport if UNICEF continues to report that one in five out-of-school children lives in Nigeria. Sporting achievements continue to be celebrated like a moon landing, with students lounging at home with no hope of resuming in sight.
Aside from ensuring that every Nigerian receives a universal and practical education, our school infrastructure needs to be reviewed, with minimum thresholds for enrollment should be set by law. In addition to well-equipped libraries and laboratories, schools should have sports facilities where students can engage in physical activity. What we have today are schools mushrooming on every available urban acre that lack adequate space and ventilation, draining and exhausting both underpaid teachers and troubled students alike, making learning ineffective.
Unfortunately, the solution does not lie in an elite private education, the only marketing tools of which are ex-students’ excellent results on external exams, morale and uninterrupted academic sessions. In order to achieve more than a dozen gold medals in global competitions, our schools should be structured in such a way that athletic aptitude is taken into account for admission. We should have schools that attract potential students because they have athletic infrastructure and produce students who are professional athletes. Also, education is incomplete without physical education.
The solution to having more Buga dancers on the international sports stage is not also to organize quasi-school sports competitions, which only serve to present the sponsors and organizers. Rather, investments in the sports infrastructure and qualified trainers are required for the education of the students.
This infrastructure and pedagogy is very important as Nigeria usually only sends representatives in sports that are less intensive, both capitalistically and technically. What we are doing now is relying only on our uncontrolled populations at home and abroad to select athletes. Why haven’t we gotten athletes to compete in more field disciplines like the pole vault, or expand our strengths into the middle and long distance races? Why do our para medals only come from powerlifting? The countries that top the medal tables do this by sending athletes across the sport spectrum and disciplines, and it doesn’t happen by accident. It requires conscious investment. We can’t just pick raw and unrefined guys from the creeks of the Niger Delta or Lagos’ motor park with no training and expect swimming or boxing medals.
Producing many more Ese Brumes is no big deal. It’s as simple as setting up runways leading to the sandy long jump pit that supports the setting sun in open fields across the association. But alas, we’ve turned neighborhood spaces and playgrounds into malls and more housing for the wealthy. The insecurity ravaging the nation is just youth taking revenge on a nation that has choked every available nostril to express itself positively. A visit to these countries that continue to do well in sports is the way they have built their cities to ensure recreational facilities are available in every neighborhood. Nigeria did better in sports when every estate had pitches.
Finally, the divide Nigeria’s recent sporting outings are uncovering is the part of the country that continues to represent us. Our sporting contingents in all sports show that only people from one half of the country adorn the colors of Nigeria. It’s the same gendered argument that a one-winged bird cannot fly effectively. One might have thought that intellectually inferior people would make up for it physically, but the medal tables of even national sports festivals don’t support that. It is the same states that perform best in the joint entrance exams that still top the medal table.
Leaders of illiterate countries should know that dwelling on that description is nothing to be proud of. They harm themselves more than they benefit. Keeping their girls uneducated and deploying their blue-blood men to political positions and higher positions in the civil service will only perpetuate the Armageddon that such underdevelopment brings.
- Okunfolami writes from FESTAC in Lagos; 07031973457