Nigeria Content Online

The
ban placed on Nigeria by world football governing body, FIFA, over what
it described as government interference in the affairs of the Nigeria
Football Federation (NFF), may be a blessing after all.

Mary
Onyali-Omagbemi, one of Nigeria’s most accomplished athletes, said this
at a meeting of concerned members of the sports fraternity who met on
Monday to review the state of sports in the country.

“It was what we did
that warranted FIFA to drop the hammer on us. It is one of us that
wrote FIFA that made them come down on us,” Onyali-Omagbemi said.

For her, the ban was not all bad news. She believes there might be a silver lining to it.

“Maybe what has
happened will make us return to the grassroots,” she said. “We must go
back to the grassroots because it is the only way out of this terrible
situation we have found ourselves in. All sports federations in the
country must as a matter of urgency seek to embrace the grassroots
options if we must make any headway.”

Onyali-Omagbemi,
who won medals for Nigeria at the All Africa Games, Commonwealth Games,
and the Olympics during her days as a competitor, said new talents were
not being discovered nationwide. Instead, she said what is happening is
that tired and aging athletes are being recycled.

“We must find a way
out of this mess. We cannot continue like this but first of all we must
accept collective responsibility for what has happened and then chart a
way forward,” she said.

No more negativity

Onyali-Omagbemi said that one of the things to do is to believe in Nigeria.

“We must overcome the tendency to stop being negative about our
country. There are a lot of positives we can take away from Nigeria.
There good people doing great things here and we must always emphasise
that. It is because we keep running ourselves down that bodies like
FIFA always threaten us. It is sad that some people in this country are
writing to organisations like FIFA, IOC etc to drop the hammer on us.
It is very unfortunate,” she said.