Nigeria’s Sports Sector Toxic With Vested Interests, Says Minster

The minister of sports development, Senator John Owan Enoh, has described the sports environment as toxic and too hot to handle.

Enoh made the remark in an aggressive manner at the reception held for Team Nigeria’s wrestlers to the recently concluded Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

He lambasted Nigeria’s sports stakeholders and commentators alike for making life unbearable for him with their negative conversations following Nigeria’s woeful outing at the Paris Games.

LEADERSHIP Sports recall that the Paris 2024 Olympics ended with Nigeria facing a bitterly disappointing outcome marked by a lack of medals despite a whopping investment of N9 billion and a sizable contingent of 88 athletes competing in 12 sports at the Games.

The minister had boasted before the Games that Team Nigeria would surpass its best record achieved at the Atlanta 1996 Olympics but turned out to be a hallucination.

“The stage after the Olympics has been very toxic and at some point is not even related to the outcome of the Olympics. I find this sector a very toxic one with vested interests. People have long standing animosity with themselves and they waited for the outcome of the Olympics to voice out their frustrations.

“Nigeria has failed in the Olympics before with nothing happening but I have been subjected to all forms of harassment.

“When we won they didn’t say anything. At the 2021 AFCON, Nigeria didn’t go beyond the round of 16, the AFCON that took place this year we played in the final and they didn’t say anything. We went to the African Games and did wonderfully well, they didn’t say anything as well. They are people who should know and they know, but deliberately mischievous and misleading either because they wanted the Ministry to include them in the delegation to Paris, and the ministry can’t include the whole country to Paris.

“I think there was a reason why we didn’t win a medal in Paris. Paris was a reality check and if we had come back with two or three medals, all that is going on would not be happening and we will think that we have done well.

“In London 2012, we didn’t win a medal, meetings were convened in the Aso Villa under Jonathan presidency and in 2016 we got a bronze from football, Tokyo 2020 we got silver and bronze from wrestling and long jump, but it does appear that the outcome of the 2024 Paris Olympics has form a think point that things need to change. I’m glad with the conversations that are going on in sports. Like I said at the beginning, I’m not justifying why we didn’t win a medal,” a visibly angry Enoh said.