Chioma Ajunwa

Nigerians’ performances in sports in recent times, have declined drastically and the need to reposition it in line with world best practices cannot be over-emphasised.  The first Nigerian and first African woman to win the Olympics Gold Medal, Chioma Ajunwa-Opara, a police woman, feels that the Nigerian sports sector has been poorly managed by the wrong hands and so advocates that people with expertise should be allowed to manage sports in Nigeria. Chioma was the first Nigerian to win Olympic Gold, a feat she accomplished at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. A few weeks back, the Imo State-born Chief Superintendent of Police was made the Divisional Police Officer (DPO) of Meran Police Station in Lagos. Saddened by the fallen status of sports in the country, she said that for sports to thrive in Nigeria, certain factors must be put into consideration. She expressed her dismay at this year’s Breeding Leaders for Empowerment and National Transformation (BLENT), a brand of The Redeemed Evangelical Mission (TREM) held for the stakeholders in the Sports Industry in Lagos. She spoke with Mary Ekah

Nigerians’ performances in sports have declined drastically, what can be done to improve it?

There is need to professionalise sports in Nigeria, and its subsequently removal from the mainstream of civil service. People with expertise, both athletes and managers should be allowed to come in and manage sports. The government in making policy for sports should see it as a specilaised field where only the experts should prevail. That is exactly what is happening in Nigeria.  When it comes to the time ministers are appointed, you can see that nobody cares about sports and what sports can do for Nigeria. And so they chose any one to handle the ministry without considering the whether the person is a sports technocrat that possesses the necessary competence in the area of sports development and policy. They forget that in Nigeria today, the only thing that unites us is sports and in the whole world that is the only general language we have. So, I believe strongly therefore that we should be mindful of those we pick to manage sports and should give more attention to those who can manage the sports institution. If we do not use the right people, Nigeria’s sports will continue to be messed up.

If not sports, I wouldn’t have been known.  I know that God always make a way when you are serious. Through my seriousness in sports I was known. If not sports Bishop Mike Okonkwo wouldn’t have known me much less inviting me to talk on sports today. God also used somebody like Chief Segun Odegbami as well as the Nigerian Police Force to bring me to limelight. Today I have seen the dividends of it. And when I got out of this country, my eyes were opened and I realised that we have not started at all.

Is it just the management that is the problem?

No, management is one of the major problems with sports in Ngeria. Aside that there is need to make available sporting facilities. You want an athlete to win Olympics gold and then train in a country that there are no sports facilities? That is not possible. It is high time we knew what to do and how to prepare our athletes for world competitions.  We have sports institutes without facilities and coaches. You have talents out there and yet you do not want to retain them but still go ahead to use the medieval people. Sports today has gone scientific and that we need people with special knowledge to handle it. When you are outside the country, as an athlete, you are told the kind of foods to eat and those to avoid eating; the particular tine to eat certain food as well as when to go out and when not to go out.  But here nobody knows about that and even they know, nobody cares! You cannot give what you don’t have.  I love this saying that goes thus: ‘If you are informed, you would be deformed’ and that is exactly what we are doing here. We are deforming our athletes and that is why they perform better when they are out of the country.  A good example is our footballers that play in foreign clubs but while they were here they kept struggling because of the kind of training we give to them, which only end up deforming them. 

Would you say this is responsible for Nigerians poor performance in the just concluded Olympics?

There are many reasons why we do not make great impacts when we go out for global competitions like the Olympics, World Championships, Commonwealth Games and all the rest. We need to cultivate the attitude of using a systematic approach rather than ‘fire brigade’ approach which does not fetch us anything. And I believe that by the time we cultivate this attitude that we have to start preparations on time, like after this 2012 Olympics Games, we need to start immediately preparing our athletes for the next Olympics games, which comes up in 2016. If you train an athlete for four years, definitely he/she would have something to show for it. And remember also that we need to invest in sports and when we do that, we would see the profits. 

You spoke so much about improving sports in Nigeria, what are your personal efforts to achieving this?

I have a foundation called Chioma Ajunwa Foundation and one of our objectives is trying to create awareness in drug use so that our athletes could go off drugs. Like what happened few weeks back after the All Africa Championship, where three of our athlete tasted positive.  Somebody must come out  … in the past we had that problem, which I was one of the victims and I took it upon myself to come out and start telling the athletes that they should be careful on what they drink and eat.

Nigerians’ performances in sports have declined drastically, what can be done to improve it?

There is need to professionalise sports in Nigeria, and its subsequently removal from the mainstream of civil service. People with expertise, both athletes and managers should be allowed to come in and manage sports. The government in making policy for sports should see it as a specilaised field where only the experts should prevail. That is exactly what is happening in Nigeria.  When it comes to the time ministers are appointed, you can see that nobody cares about sports and what sports can do for Nigeria. And so they chose any one to handle the ministry without considering the whether the person is a sports technocrat that possesses the necessary competence in the area of sports development and policy. They forget that in Nigeria today, the only thing that unites us is sports and in the whole world that is the only general language we have. So, I believe strongly therefore that we should be mindful of those we pick to manage sports and should give more attention to those who can manage the sports institution. If we do not use the right people, Nigeria’s sports will continue to be messed up.

If not sports, I wouldn’t have been known.  I know that God always make a way when you are serious. Through my seriousness in sports I was known. If not sports Bishop Mike Okonkwo wouldn’t have known me much less inviting me to talk on sports today. God also used somebody like Chief Segun Odegbami as well as the Nigerian Police Force to bring me to limelight. Today I have seen the dividends of it. And when I got out of this country, my eyes were opened and I realised that we have not started at all.

Is it just the management that is the problem?

No, management is one of the major problems with sports in Ngeria. Aside that there is need to make available sporting facilities. You want an athlete to win Olympics gold and then train in a country that there are no sports facilities? That is not possible. It is high time we knew what to do and how to prepare our athletes for world competitions.  We have sports institutes without facilities and coaches. You have talents out there and yet you do not want to retain them but still go ahead to use the medieval people. Sports today has gone scientific and that we need people with special knowledge to handle it. When you are outside the country, as an athlete, you are told the kind of foods to eat and those to avoid eating; the particular tine to eat certain food as well as when to go out and when not to go out.  But here nobody knows about that and even they know, nobody cares! You cannot give what you don’t have.  I love this saying that goes thus: ‘If you are informed, you would be deformed’ and that is exactly what we are doing here. We are deforming our athletes and that is why they perform better when they are out of the country.  A good example is our footballers that play in foreign clubs but while they were here they kept struggling because of the kind of training we give to them, which only end up deforming them. 

Would you say this is responsible for Nigerians poor performance in the just concluded Olympics?

There are many reasons why we do not make great impacts when we go out for global competitions like the Olympics, World Championships, Commonwealth Games and all the rest. We need to cultivate the attitude of using a systematic approach rather than ‘fire brigade’ approach which does not fetch us anything. And I believe that by the time we cultivate this attitude that we have to start preparations on time, like after this 2012 Olympics Games, we need to start immediately preparing our athletes for the next Olympics games, which comes up in 2016. If you train an athlete for four years, definitely he/she would have something to show for it. And remember also that we need to invest in sports and when we do that, we would see the profits. 

You spoke so much about improving sports in Nigeria, what are your personal efforts to achieving this?

I have a foundation called Chioma Ajunwa Foundation and one of our objectives is trying to create awareness in drug use so that our athletes could go off drugs. Like what happened few weeks back after the All Africa Championship, where three of our athlete tasted positive.  Somebody must come out  … in the past we had that problem, which I was one of the victims and I took it upon myself to come out and start telling the athletes that they should be careful on what they drink and eat, because you might not know when take what would make you taste positive. Somebody must be out there to let them know and that is one of the major things that the Foundation is out to achieve.

Another thing is for us to ensure that we catch them young. We believe that is one of the serious problems that we are having in the Nigerian sports at the moment. WE depend al the time on our old athletes while the young and upcoming athletes are being neglected without any one neither giving the any training nor bothering to discover new talents. We believe that by 2016, we should be able to get good athletes that would be representing us in global events, so that in 2016 Olympics, we would have a new set of athletes representing Nigeria.

Are you still very much active in sports?

No! I can’t be active al the time. Right now, I have resigned from active sports and now I am combating crime and I thank God that after sports, I have a job I can fall back to.

How were your experiences as an athlete on a global pedestal?

The experiences were awesome. You know when you travel outside the country, you meet a lot of friend and also experience a lot of new things and you are able to compare thing fro where you are coming. I believe that the awesome experience we enjoy outside the country could also be enjoyed here when we have the right people in place. That is just the simple truth. We have money in this country and if we can get the right people in place, we ld be able o get all the necessary facilities that are required to make sports thrive in Nigeria and Nigerian talents would have no need to run out of the country to other nations due to lack of facilities. But the problem is that here in Nigeria when the money is being mapped out for the provision of such facilities, somebody group of people will just corner it, that has been a big problem in our sports sector and I am praying day and night that one day God will put the right people in place.