World Cup flops: Onyemaepu blames education curriculum

Emeka Ibemere

The failure of Nigeria to put an impressive outing at the ongoing world cup in Brazil has been blamed on the poor sports development that has affected all the segment of the sports industry in Nigeria.  An expert and Multiple Sports Services, MSS, owner has disclosed.

Onyemaepu Teddy Oscar, the President of (MSS) said the ‘academisization’ of  sports has greatly done harm to the sports development in Nigeria, adding that the poor result Nigeria gets on every competition was because of poor educational curriculum that negates sports discovery process of athletes in the country.

The youth sports development guru blamed the whole episode on the educational policy that tends and pretends to be more academics to the neglect of sports.

Onyemaepu said that since inception of private ownership of primary, secondary and tertiary institutions by businessmen, new found churches, politicians and teachers that schools hardly produced athletes and sports men and women again. He further disclosed that such competitions like School sports, Governors cup, NUGA games, NUPGA games and even primary school games have all fizzled out of the school calendar.

The sports development expert said every school now emphasis much on academics alone without sports curriculum in their school system. He also blamed governments and some institutions for not paying attention to sports facilities while accrediting, registering and approving the existence of such schools. He said 79% of schools in Nigeria have no sports facility arguing that academics alone is not a true talent hunt of training up a child.

According to Onyemaepu, internationally, sports is seen as part of education and it makes one self-sufficient easily than after obtaining all the degrees in the world, they still roam the street in search of job that doesn’t exist. He said Nigeria should diversify in knowledge pursuit to ease of pressure from the single employer of labour, government and gives training that would give one job without waiting for government.
He said it was the type of poor and bad educational curriculum of the country that basically sought for knowledge in academics without looking in other direction of acquiring knowledge that has affected the country to produce good 23 players for a challenge of world cup.

The president of MSS traced back days of glory in Nigeria sports and said those days where the days when Nigerians pick their athletes from organised school competitions and urged the government and the private schools owners to reverse back to such school calendar that has a place sports

“I cannot say yes or no because of the present situation of things in Nigeria. Those days, you will hear Faliat Olokoya, Merry Onyeali, Innocent Egbunike and others but now I cannot close or open my eyes and mention any athlete been proud to say that was discovered in the last decade who is a champion in his or her area of endeavour”, he stated. “Now we are losing our athletes to other countries. Sports in Nigeria are having a big challenge. And the Federal, States and Local authorities are not interested. The corporate entities, private sectors and individuals are not also interested, too. Let me tell you the truth, nothing is working in the sports sector. All those years of our success in sports were the days of military rule”.

“No more school sports, national sports festival, Nigeria Universities Games Association, where young athletes are discovered are no more because governments are no longer interested in developmental sports. No grassroots programme for sports in this country”.

He advocates for emergency to be declared in the school system because according to him, good athletes, talented minds, creative sports men and women are being sent to other areas unknowingly and are killing their talents.

“Is it a must that everybody must be doctor, lawyer, banker, journalist, engineer, trader and somewhat”? He queried. Onyemaepu tasked the government to make it mandatory for each nursery and private, secondary and universities to make sports compulsory adding that with such policy, good athletes could be discovered.

 “Catch them young is what it is in Europe and America. There its not about academics, law, doctor, I want my soon to be banker and so on, No!, its about knowing what the child wants to be and you guide him to realize their dreams and aspirations that its what education is all about”, he said. “I was at my child’s school the other day, and everywhere is paved with stones, and a slab, is that the kind of place, a good environment for sports? No single sports facility only recreational facilities you see in centres. That is not sport facility. You cannot see basketball post, no handball, no playing ground, no table tennis and long tennis facilities and you want to have athletes that will beat those who started very earlier in their lives? It’s not possible”. All the private schools, even government schools don’t have sports facilities any more”. Continuing, he said.

“The athlete we have now started from the streets games and they weren’t tutored right from the beginning, either from the schools, academy or sports institute. Those days of Teachers Training system of colleges, we had teachers training students and discovering athletes for the school, the community and the nation at large”.

 “The only way is to create a programme where hidden athletes will be discovered. Government should have a programme in the States, local governments, at the national level, even in churches, in mosques, schools, community levels where hidden athletes would be discovered. And government should diversify their sports and not only centralising on soccer alone”.

According to Onyemaepu, government and sports administrators should try and develop track and field, table tennis, long tennis, rugby, boxing, taekwondo, and others not only football alone and athletes for these sports are hidden in various schools in the country.

Let governments and Ministry of education go back to those days of school sports, organise yearly events for all the schools in all the states in all sports event and see what you would have in the next world cup”. The sports youth developer opined that a situation where athletes pay to be recruited or call to camp on the number of  senators, governors, and traditional rulers, you know cannot help the development of sports in Nigeria because according to him, the best athletes don’t have money to bribe and rust in their villages and die with their talents.

“Sports will enhance this country and it will create job opportunities and create wealth. Sports are good instrument to fight poverty. Private sectors are not investing into sports because the government is showing less concern to it”. 

He said Nigeria failed because the right athletes where not selected and it was based on who you know and the amount you can be able to pay those in charge. He concluded by saying that “athletes discovered by the state during the sports festival are nurtured to greater heights and taken good care of. He further stated that Kanu Nwankwo is a product of school sports.

Onyemaepu argued that school-sponsored sports programs should be seriously supported. He said American schools put too much of an emphasis on athletics. “Sports are rooted in American schools in a way they are not almost anywhere else,”

According to MSS President, American student-athletes reap many benefits from participating in sports, but the costs to the schools could outweigh their benefits and he said that was why Americans citizens do well in every competitions they contest. Onyemaepu contends that sports should get closer to the academic curriculum of schools in Nigeria.  Nigeria should learn from America and other countries adding that all of whom emphasize athletics more in school. School-sponsored sports appear to provide benefits that seem to increase, not detract from, academic success. On whether sports inclined student do well more than academic inclined students, a 2011 report from Harvard University shows that Massachusetts produces math scores comparable to South Korea and Finland, where academics are emphasised more than sports while Mississippi scores are closer to Trinidad and Tobago.

“Schools in Massachusetts provide sports programs while schools in Finland do not. Schools in Mississippi may love football while in Tobago interscholastic sports are nowhere near as prominent. Sports cannot explain these similarities in performance. They can’t explain international differences either”, the report stated.

“If it is true that sports undermine the academic mission of American schools, we would expect to see a negative relationship between the commitment to athletics and academic achievement. However, the University of Arkansas’s Daniel H. Bowen and Jay P. Greene actually find the opposite. They examine this relationship by analyzing schools’ sports winning percentages as well as student-athletic participation rates compared to graduation rates and standardized test score achievement over a five-year period for all public high schools in Ohio. Controlling for student poverty levels, demographics, and district financial resources, both measures of a school’s commitment to athletics are significantly, positively related to lower dropout rates as well as higher test scores”. The report further highlighted.