I really enjoyed this. Thanks for your excellent insights as usual. I don’t know the answer to why the country isn’t serious about sports, but I think the generational shift in the late 90’s when a large share of school enrollment shifted from public funded schools to private ones is a huge part of our sports performance issue.
According to Statista, from a 2019 data, 47% of elementary schools in Naija are now private, it’s 63% for secondary schools! In Tebogo’s Botswana, the data is 87% attending state owned public schools combined, with 10% private. So maybe there’s something there?
I was not a student athlete by any measure. However, I remember our school sports culture in 80’s and 90’s Naija was engaging, competitive and very intentional. Watching these Olympics with my young kids brought back a lot of forgotten memories. I forgot I knew the basic form for a Javelin throw, the triple jump rules and how to properly throw a shot put, ( the field one, not the other one 😃) even if I can’t throw beyond my shadow.
Most of us learned these things in mandatory PE classes, and on large, dedicated public school facility grounds built with youth sports in mind. Not to mention the all important public school inter-house sports festivals we all grew up with.
I’ve not lived in Nigeria in over a decade, but in my visits and interactions with the last few generation of Nigerian school kids, you can tell they’ve been shortchanged by their private schools - sports wise. PE is not prioritized and most don’t have the facilities or space for field sports.
I’m not shading private schools. They jumped in to fill a gap created by poor planning, teacher strikes and horrible years of public education investment. There is only so much a “school proprietor” can do with private investment. Most of the private schools I saw can barely fit a baby swing in their tiny concrete compounds. They are focused on getting their kids ready to pass WAEC, GCE or SAT. So they are likely thinking ‘who shotput help?’
Anyway, I’ve rambled enough. Nigeria can fix it, but like you said, it will take the same sense of purpose and vision required to fix our oil wahala or just about anything.
That's a very fascinating point. The numbers are lot higher for private schools than those numbers from Statista. There was a research paper some years ago in Lagos that found that about 85% of students in the state were in some form of private schooling. Once you throw in the typical Nigerian coordination problems, it's not hard to see how sports suffers.
I attended a private school and the best part of every school year was the inter-house sports competition. But nowadays few schools devote time and effort to such contests and even fewer schools have the space and capacity to host them (my secondary school included).
I'm grateful to my PHE teacher who took time to teach us sports like field hockey, cricket and long jump. Hopefully, we can replicate his efforts across more Nigerian private and public schools.
THe approach to fixing this for me seems to be a focus on school sports infrastructure. Reading this article (https://www.si.com/college/stanford/olympic-sports/stanford-athletes-win-a-school-record-39-medals-in-paris-games-01j51rgyctwv) about Stanford's performance at the olympics made this clearer. Also, concerning the Nigerian export economy, many of the Stanford athletes represented other countries that weren't the US. Most of these students paid hefty school fees or received scholarships to go to Stanford. Another notable university was LSU where Duplantis and Shacarri Richardson went to school.
I strongly believe we can improve attendance records and student engagement if we create a pathway in schools at all levels for sports inclined students. In Nigeria, the refrain too often is that sports are useless compared to traditional professions. And the stories of people like Solaja make this statement seem true. But we have seen sports empower people in other countries, it's up to us to replicate this.
Yes, it's a good approach and makes so much sense. The earlier comment about private schools was something I hadn't really thought about but it's clear to see how the proliferation of private schools will have a negative effect on sports. A good starting point will be to encourage schools to share sport facilities
Brilliant article, and I agree with those who made the valid points about focusing on school sports as a way to develop the sector. In my thinking, the route to develop sports is not even at the federal level but with state governments. There is a reason why the bulk of our athletes over the last 10 years have been or lived in Delta State - and that is because of one state government which over 8 years invested hugely sports, and because it was led by one visionary. This is also the reason why our sporting federations suffer - they are filled mostly with career civil servants who learn to play the sports politics from state levels and parlay it into success at the sporting federations, because they know the financial benefits that come with it - the foreign trips, the opportunities for corruption, etc, but with no incentive to grow the sport and no one being held accountable. For example, no one was punished at the AFN for not having mandatory drug tests on 10 athletes for the Tokyo Olympics, and no one will be held accountable for omitting Favour Ofili's name in the 100m event in the Paris Olympics. It is typical of civil service culture.
I really enjoyed this. Thanks for your excellent insights as usual. I don’t know the answer to why the country isn’t serious about sports, but I think the generational shift in the late 90’s when a large share of school enrollment shifted from public funded schools to private ones is a huge part of our sports performance issue.
According to Statista, from a 2019 data, 47% of elementary schools in Naija are now private, it’s 63% for secondary schools! In Tebogo’s Botswana, the data is 87% attending state owned public schools combined, with 10% private. So maybe there’s something there?
I was not a student athlete by any measure. However, I remember our school sports culture in 80’s and 90’s Naija was engaging, competitive and very intentional. Watching these Olympics with my young kids brought back a lot of forgotten memories. I forgot I knew the basic form for a Javelin throw, the triple jump rules and how to properly throw a shot put, ( the field one, not the other one 😃) even if I can’t throw beyond my shadow.
Most of us learned these things in mandatory PE classes, and on large, dedicated public school facility grounds built with youth sports in mind. Not to mention the all important public school inter-house sports festivals we all grew up with.
I’ve not lived in Nigeria in over a decade, but in my visits and interactions with the last few generation of Nigerian school kids, you can tell they’ve been shortchanged by their private schools - sports wise. PE is not prioritized and most don’t have the facilities or space for field sports.
I’m not shading private schools. They jumped in to fill a gap created by poor planning, teacher strikes and horrible years of public education investment. There is only so much a “school proprietor” can do with private investment. Most of the private schools I saw can barely fit a baby swing in their tiny concrete compounds. They are focused on getting their kids ready to pass WAEC, GCE or SAT. So they are likely thinking ‘who shotput help?’
Anyway, I’ve rambled enough. Nigeria can fix it, but like you said, it will take the same sense of purpose and vision required to fix our oil wahala or just about anything.
That's a very fascinating point. The numbers are lot higher for private schools than those numbers from Statista. There was a research paper some years ago in Lagos that found that about 85% of students in the state were in some form of private schooling. Once you throw in the typical Nigerian coordination problems, it's not hard to see how sports suffers.
Wow 85% is now private? That’s a huge leap from what we had growing up. Nigeria is an interesting experiment
Here's one study that was done by DfiD. See page 6 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/57a089b940f0b652dd000394/61517_Final_Summary_Lagos_School_Choice.pdf
I attended a private school and the best part of every school year was the inter-house sports competition. But nowadays few schools devote time and effort to such contests and even fewer schools have the space and capacity to host them (my secondary school included).
I'm grateful to my PHE teacher who took time to teach us sports like field hockey, cricket and long jump. Hopefully, we can replicate his efforts across more Nigerian private and public schools.
THe approach to fixing this for me seems to be a focus on school sports infrastructure. Reading this article (https://www.si.com/college/stanford/olympic-sports/stanford-athletes-win-a-school-record-39-medals-in-paris-games-01j51rgyctwv) about Stanford's performance at the olympics made this clearer. Also, concerning the Nigerian export economy, many of the Stanford athletes represented other countries that weren't the US. Most of these students paid hefty school fees or received scholarships to go to Stanford. Another notable university was LSU where Duplantis and Shacarri Richardson went to school.
I strongly believe we can improve attendance records and student engagement if we create a pathway in schools at all levels for sports inclined students. In Nigeria, the refrain too often is that sports are useless compared to traditional professions. And the stories of people like Solaja make this statement seem true. But we have seen sports empower people in other countries, it's up to us to replicate this.
Yes, it's a good approach and makes so much sense. The earlier comment about private schools was something I hadn't really thought about but it's clear to see how the proliferation of private schools will have a negative effect on sports. A good starting point will be to encourage schools to share sport facilities
Brilliant article, and I agree with those who made the valid points about focusing on school sports as a way to develop the sector. In my thinking, the route to develop sports is not even at the federal level but with state governments. There is a reason why the bulk of our athletes over the last 10 years have been or lived in Delta State - and that is because of one state government which over 8 years invested hugely sports, and because it was led by one visionary. This is also the reason why our sporting federations suffer - they are filled mostly with career civil servants who learn to play the sports politics from state levels and parlay it into success at the sporting federations, because they know the financial benefits that come with it - the foreign trips, the opportunities for corruption, etc, but with no incentive to grow the sport and no one being held accountable. For example, no one was punished at the AFN for not having mandatory drug tests on 10 athletes for the Tokyo Olympics, and no one will be held accountable for omitting Favour Ofili's name in the 100m event in the Paris Olympics. It is typical of civil service culture.