LEADERSHIP Sports Person/Promoter of the Year 2024: Bambo Akani, CEO/Founder, Making of Champions Limited

Bambo Akani’s visionary leadership birthed Making of Champions (MOC), a Sports Media and Management Company set up to elevate the profile and performance of Sports in Nigeria and the rest of Africa, and is dedicated to maximising the potential that sports has to bring to the country, and the continent on a whole, together.

The Making of Champions movement started in 2013 with the production of the feature-length documentary about Nigeria’s Olympic History, after seeing Nigeria, a country blessed with so many people of natural athletic ability, return from the London 2012 Olympics with ZERO medals – the first time Team Nigeria has failed to win a medal at the Olympics since Seoul ’88.

The documentary was meant to promote awareness of Nigeria’s and West Africa’s great potential in track and field, a sport that has long been neglected in this part of the continent. At the very core of the MOC’s documentary is the idea that Nigeria can become the number one track and field nation globally with the right investment. In January 2016, it launched Nigeria’s first professional Track Club to lead the way in the revival of Nigerian athletics.

The goal is to produce world-class athletes in Nigeria by providing and ensuring good nutrition, medical care, and physiotherapy for their athletes, guiding them in their education and personal development, and providing career management services for the athletes as they grow in prominence and stature on the national, continental, and global stages.

Making of Champions’ CEO, Bambo Akani, believes that Nigeria has the human resources to challenge the likes of the United States of America and Jamaica in athletics, as there is an abundant pool of talent to make the country a dominant force in the sport. He argues that Nigeria should even be ahead of Jamaica and the United States if there is self-will and seriousness to make it happen.

So, after years of consistent efforts to rebirth Nigeria’s dominance in track and field, and with Akani’s deep knowledge of athletics as an avid sports writer, photo-blogger and managerial acumen, MOC secured MTN as the title sponsor of an exciting new Schools Athletics Championships across Nigeria, MTN CHAMPS, last year.

The Championship, which aims to unearth and foster athletic talent across the country, is modelled after the Jamaican High School CHAMPS. In August this year, the inaugural class of 20 athletes from Seasons 1 and 2 of MTN CHAMPS were inducted into the MOC Athletics Academy in Lagos.

The athletes, comprising five female sprinters, three female quarter milers, seven male sprinters and five male quarter milers, were selected from some of the top performers of the first two seasons of the MTN CHAMPS anchored by MOC in Akwa Ibom, Abia, Anambra, Oyo, Osun, Plateau, Niger, Cross River and Kano states.

For many teenagers, sports is a pastime, but to these 20 exceptional young athletes, it is a pathway to a brighter future, thanks to MOC.

As part of the MTN’s partnership with MOC, the 20 athletes will have access to training facilities, expert coaching, and a comprehensive development programme during their one-year residency at the academy, designed to enhance their skills and prepare them for international competitions like the Commonwealth Games and the Olympics.

For these unprecedented moves toward making Nigeria one of the world’s dominant forces in track and field, Bambo Akani rightly deserves this award.