Three different Nigerian-born track champions
are the fastest men for Africa, Asia and Europe.
That’s right, one country on one continent, has
three different athletes representing three
different continents. How to explain this? You can
blame a badly run sports administration and a
scarcity of resources needed to keep finely tuned
athletes at the top level. And, of course, personal
ambition is also a factor.
Take the case of the European record holder
Francis Obikwelu, 36, who left his homeland as a
teenager and settled in Portugal. He continued to
represent Nigeria until 2001.
The circumstances that led him to switch
nationality were unfortunate. After suffering a
career threatening injury at the 2000 Sydney
Olympics, the Athletics Federation of Nigerian
(AFN) abandoned the star in his hour of need.
Not only had he to foot the medical bills himself
but also spent a few months in hospital
recuperating after surgery complications led to a
blood clot. A year later, he became a naturalised
Portuguese citizen and his silver medal
performance at the 2004 Athens Olympics was
his career best as he set a European record of
9.86sec. The record is still standing.
Asia’s fastest man is Femi Ogunode, 24. He has
said the move to become a Qatari national in
2010 was a calculated risk that paid off. He
alleges nepotism and corruption in Nigerian
athletics. Last year, he set a career best of
9.93sec at the Asian Games. This April he ran a
few seconds faster to set the Asian record of
9.91sec at the Asian Athletics Championships.
The one who stayed is sprint master Olusoji
Fasuba, 30, whose 9.85sec record is yet to be
broken since 2006. This was a one-hundreth of a
second better than the old record of 9.86sec
that was set by Namibian track and field legend
Frankie Fredericks for a decade. Fasuba is
currently the ninth fastest 100m runner ever
with a time below the 10sec mark.
It’s becoming something of a more frequent
narrative for African athletes to leave their home
countries and switch nationalities after facing
perennial frustrations with how their local sports
bodies are managed. Career civil servants with
no sporting backgrounds bungle the
administration of the sport by turning them into
citadels of corruption and inefficiency.
In 2011, the African 100m record holder, Fasuba
predicted African sprinters will continue to be
underachievers, unless they get proper training
facilities and adequate remuneration. As a result,
well-funded athletic bodies from rich countries
eager to be competitive and boost their national
pride by any means necessary exploit the
situation by coming to lure Africa’s young
talents.
While several European countries and the US
have taken African athletes, Qatar, Bahrain and
the United Arab Emirates have been more
aggressively pursuing talents from the continent
in the last decade.
Last year there was a somewhat farcical scenario
at the Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea
when 14 of the 22 individual running events
were won by athletes of African origin who had
switched nationality. China’s Su Bingtian, who
came second to Ogunode at last year’s Asian
Games, told AFP that the Gulf states’ African
contingent is “unfair”, because “they are taller
and have a longer stride,” meaning Asian born
athletes are at a physical disadvantage.
Nationality transfers by African athletes are not
just limited to Asiatic countries but Europe and
the US are some of the biggest beneficiaries. Star
athletes from Ethiopia, Kenya, Morocco, have
mostly gone to represent Nordic countries such
as Finland, Denmark, Sweden among other
countries.
While African countries are busy exporting
talents elsewhere they have no means to keep
young talents or attract foreign based athletes to
return.
• Culled from Quartz Africa

www.thisdaylive.com/articles/three-different-nigerians-hold-100m-sprint-records-for-africa-asia-and-europe/212898/

Naija guys no dey carry last