Team Nigeria ended its campaign at the XXXIII Olympic Games on Saturday with no medal to show for efforts, which began in Bordeaux a day before the event’s opening ceremony.
Before ending its participation a day before the closing ceremony, Nigeria’s athletes had participated in 12 sports.
These were in athletics (35), badminton (1), basketball (13), boxing (2), canoeing (2), cycling (1), football (22), swimming (2), table tennis (4), taekwondo (1), weightlifting (2) and wrestling (6).
Following its first outing through the Super Falcons in Bordeaux in women football on July 25, Team Nigeria has however gone from one misadventure or another in virtually all the events.
Except in women’s basketball, where it participated through D’Tigress, which reached the quarter-finals, a feat no African team has ever achieved, Team Nigeria was almost not at the Games.
It was a case of near-misses in several events, with the athletes and teams raising hopes but eventually dashing them and causing several Nigerians to lose interest in the Games.
A couple of wins were indeed recorded in athletics, wrestling and basketball, but they were not just good enough to take Team Nigeria near the podium.
This was why the few Nigerian journalists at the women’s weightlifting 71kg event on Friday, where Joy Eze performed, were even caught dozing off.
They were waiting for the event to just end.
And it was worse with wrestler Hannah Reuben, who, while competing in women’s freestyle 76kg on Saturday, had the problem of not seeing her compatriots in the stands.
She lost 2-5 in a round one bout at the Champ-de-Mars Arena in Paris to Davaanasan Enkh Amah of Mongolia.
That was how bad it was for Team Nigeria.
Speaking on the team’s performance while addressing journalists on Friday, The Minister of Sports Development, John Enoh, acknowledged that it was a disappointing outing.
“It was indeed a performance not worthy of our name and the efforts put in,” he said.
Enoh noted that Team Nigeria’s performance not only disappointed Nigerians, but also did no justice to the commitment of President Bola Tinubu’s administration to sports development.
He added: “Our performance here (in Paris) belied our efforts both as a government and as administrators, and it did not also justify the efforts our athletes put in.”
He however promised a change, assuring that serious efforts were going to be put into restructuring the entire sports landscape both in terms of personnel and institutions.
“He said: “We just have to make changes, no matter whose ox is going to be gored.
“We must put in place reforms so as not to have a repeat of what we have just witnessed.”
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that Reuben’s outing on Saturday was Team Nigeria’s final outing at the Games.
But this is aside from Sunday’s appearance in the march-past event of the closing ceremony, which is not compulsory.
NAN reports that the Nigerian contingent, including journalists and others who found their way to France for the Games, have already started departing for home.
