EYESFUD

Yussuf Alli won gold in long jump at the 1990 Commonwealth Games, and holds the national record in the sport. In this interview with ALLWELL OKPI, the retired athlete speaks about Nigerian athletics and   Commonwealth Games record holder Blessing Okagbare

The All Africa Games will hold this year and the Olympics next year. Is Nigeria prepared for these competitions?

It’s very sad that when you talk about sports in this country people talk about football, whereas we have a minimum of 33 Olympic sports in this country. Last year was Commonwealth Games. The country won three gold and three silver medals in athletics. That will give you a clear picture of where we are. And this year being World Athletics Championship (in Beijing, China) and All Africa Games (in Brazzaville, Congo). We are working towards sending a strong team to the All Africa Games, which government wants us to dominate. In the last All Africa Games (in Maputo, Mozambique) we won 10 gold. This time around, based on our programmes, we are likely to win up to 15 gold. If government looks inwards and tries to support other sports other than football, Nigeria will be more recognised globally.

Look at the last Olympics, our basketball team was in there, but the football team was not there. I think we need to look at areas like taekwondo and karate. We have good athletes in those sports. In times past, if there were seven gold medals in table tennis (in a continental competition) we would win all seven. Now we are losing our grips, all we are talking about is football.

Have we started preparing for Rio 2016 Olympics?

As a country, I’ve not seen the any signs. But as individual athletes or federation, we’ve started. Our athletes are ranked in the world and know what to do. They also do this to make their own money. It’s their job. You don’t need to tell them to prepare. It is like telling a boxer to go and train. If he doesn’t train, he will be beaten. For example, you don’t need to tell Blessing Okagbare what to do. But government needs to come in. For example, for Okagbare, who has about four or five races before the Olympics, government can say, ‘this is money, instead of running five and burn out, run two, and conserve your energy so that you will have some juice going into the Olympics.’ That is what Jamaicans do. Jamaica can win six gold at the Olympics from two athletes. Usain Bolt will win three and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce will win three. That is how other nations plan and prepare to win gold at the Olympics. So, if we have an athlete like Okagbare, who can win Olympic gold, why can’t the country come out and say, ‘this is money on the table’ and get her to concentrate, train, and win gold for us?

Great Nigerian athletes went through developmental process from school sports. Is that process still working?

Way back in the 1990s, there was a youth programme. A lot of young athletes were discovered.   In 2002 or there about, we went to sleep. We stopped promoting age-grade competitions. We wanted to win every junior competition, thereby using overage athletes. But the Athletics Federation of Nigeria has gone back to real age-grade competitions, we will now see the gradual process again. An athlete running 10.6 seconds this year, by next year, he is running 10.2 seconds, maybe after another year, he will be running 9.8 seconds. He will achieve all that while he is still young. Sport is for the youth. If you are 25 and you are running Under-17, by the time you are 28, you are done and people will think you are just 20. Now that we have addressed that and we are using athletes with their true age. I think we are on course. People like Mary Onyali and Falilat Ogunkoya stayed so long because they started very young. Look at Blessing Okagbare, she was at the 2007 Africa Games (in Algiers), and today she is still here and she is still young, whereas those that claimed to be younger than her stopped running a long time ago.

Apart from age fraud, aren’t there other things that have changed between then and now?

A lot has changed. Then, most schools had games masters, who will take you on weekends or maybe after school, but now many schools in the country don’t even have playgrounds. These days, you have schools that are just two buildings, and that is destroying sports. There is no priority on giving the child the right to play. In those days, if you didn’t play football, you played hockey, basketball, table tennis or cricket. Today, how many schools have fields? How many schools employ games masters? The nation needs to take it as a priority to properly develop sport and make it an industry.

I started competing in 1978. We had these grades: junior, intermediate and senior. It is very simple, when you are in school, from class five down, you are in the junior category. Then the people in A-levels were put in the intermediate or senior grade depending on age and also height. My first Olympics was in 1980 (in Moscow) and I competed up to 1993. I competed for 15 years   because I was truly young when I started. The last time I jumped, my distance was 8.21metres. It’s sad that the record has remained I was barely 30 when I set the record. Now 30-year-olds are trying to run with Under-20. I started with people like Innocent Egbunike from school. We met during inter-house sports in 1978, 1979, 1980. That was how we grew up. We participated in four Olympic Games.

What are Nigeria’s chances at the World Athletics Championships?

Our chances of winning medals at the World Championship in China will be the women’s sprint – the 4x100m women, the 4x400m women and possibly, in the long jump. For the World Championships, I can’t talk about gold medals, I talk about medals. I believe we can win up to four medals.

 What about the men?

I

f I say our chances are good at the World Championships, I will be lying. Let’s see how the year goes. By June, we should be able to know where our men are. Right now they are not at par with the women.

Apart from Okagbare, do we have other athletes we can bank on for medals?

I can’t really say but I know that the women 4x4oom relay team is strong. But I want us to go past depending on relay. Let us prepare and go for individual medals in the sprints, high jump and long jump. These days we don’t even get to the final of long jump at the Olympics. I got to the final at the Olympics, but I’ve discovered that the distances I jumped then, current athletes cannot jump them. It’s sad. My national record still stands, it is painful. I jumped in the analog time. There was no GSM then. Now that technology has improved, let’s do something. It’s sad. When you ask them to bring money let’s train these athletes, they will say no. But if you are an American and you can speak good English, they will give you the job. If you are not an American, they will not give you the job.

You mean the preference for foreign coaches is also a problem for our athletics?

Yes, it is happening. Quote me anywhere. They employ foreigners that cannot match my CV, and they are here being paid, while there are a lot of ex-internationals that do not have jobs. I’m the only Nigerian coach that has coached a Nigerian athlete to jump eight metres. I did it to prove a point. I took a girl, Ese Brume, to the Commonwealth Games and she won gold. We must look inwards.

Ghana will be out to end   their 33-year wait for a fifth continental title when they face Ivory Coast in the final of the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations in Bata, Equatorial Guinea on Sunday.

The Black Stars defeated hosts Equatorial Guinea 3-0 in Thursday’s semifinal, which was marred by crowd violence to set up a dream final against Ivory Coast. The Elephants beat DR Congo 3-1 in the first semifinal on Wednesday to secure a place in the final for the third time in the last nine years.

Ghana won the tournament in 1963, 1965, 1978, 1982, while Ivory Coast have won the title only once – in Senegal in 1992 – incidentally at the Blacks Stars’ expense.

The star-studded   Elephants led by Didier Drogba were beaten by Egypt on penalties in the final of the 2006 edition hosted by the North Africans. They also lost on penalties to Zambia in the final of the tournament co-hosted by Gabon and Equatorial Guinea in 2012.

Ghana, who lost 1-0 to Egypt in the final of the 2010 AFCON in Angola, placed fourth in 2012 and 2013 respectively.

Ghana coach Avram Grant said on Friday that the Black Stars would win in Bata on Sunday.

“It is good to be in the final. Before the tournament, nobody gave us a chance. Everyone talked about the other teams. Now we are in the final and we want to win,” the former Chelsea manager told AFP.

Meanwhile, coach Florent Ibenge says DR Congo do not have “the slightest fear” about playing at the Malabo Stadium where crowd violence marred an Africa Cup of Nations semi-final, AFP reports.

The Congolese are scheduled to face hosts Equatorial Guinea Saturday at the 15,000-capacity Estadio de Malabo in a third-place play-off.

Ibenge said, “We are only thinking about football and winning the game.

“We know things happen in football, but these incidents are tiny in relation to the number of games staged around the world.”

The governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in Osun State, Senator Iyiola Omisore, has called on the National Judicial Council to probe the activities of Justice Elizabeth Ikpejime-led Election Petitions Tribunal which dismissed his petition against Governor Rauf Aregbesola on Friday.

The call came as the petitioner’s reaction to the dismissal of his petition which the three-man panel unanimously agreed could not be proved beyond reasonable doubt.

Omisore, who said this in a statement made available to our correspondent in Osogbo on Saturday by his media aide, Mr. Victor Oriola, said he would appeal the judgment.

He described  the  dismissal of his petition   by the panel as a travesty of justice.

The allegation of corruption came as a surprise to many because one of the counsels to the petitioner, Mr. Nathaniel Oke ( SAN) had commended the panel while closing his case that the panel had maintained their integrity and none of the parties in the case had written any petition against any of them.

Oke reiterated his comment on the integrity of the panel on Friday after the judgment but said while the verdict was binding  on them it was not the final because they had some areas of disagreements.

Omisore’s statement read, “We had thought that the tribunal  members were of impeccable characters when our supporters were calling our attention to unholy liaison between Aregbesola’s agents and tribunal  members.

“Indication that the judgment was procured emerged shortly after the tribunal  began its ruling around10.00am on Friday when APC supporters were jubilating that they had won. It is instructive to note that the tribunal  commenced its ruling at 9.10am and rounded off by 4.38pm.

” The question to ask is: If the APC was not privy to the judgment, why were they jubilating when the tribunal  has not pronounced its judgment?

“The National Judicial Commission  should beam its searchlight on unscrupulous judges who had compromised and desecrated the judiciary with a view to rid our law court of corrupt judges who have penchant for perverting justice.

“We approached the Tribunal with the abiding faith in God that Justice will be done no matter how long it takes and we are unwavering in our belief that the appellate court would do justice to the petition.

“We want to urge our teeming supporters not to despair despite this momentary setback as we shall surely retrieve our mandate in due course.”

It will be recalled that the  President of the Court of Appeal had constituted a three man panel headed by Justice I.M. Bako to try the petition but Bako was removed following a petition written against him.

Justice Sulieman Ambrusa was appointed to lead the panel after Bako’s removal but the APC kicked against this and petitioned the Nigeria Judicial Council that Ambrussa should be replaced.

The entire panel was dissolved and a new panel headed by Justice  Ikpejime was constituted to try the case. Other members of the tribunal which eventually tried the petitioner are:  Justices Vincent Ofosi and A. I. kutigi.

The Election Petitions Tribunal hearing matters arising from the August 9, 2014 Osun State governorship election has dismissed the petition filed by the Peoples Democratic Party governorship candidate, Senator Iyiola Omisore, against the victory of the All Progressives Congress candidate, Alhaji Rauf Aregbesola, for failure to prove the allegations contained in the petition.

In a judgement read for about seven and half hours amid heavy presence of security men at the court premises in Osogbo, the tribunal’s chairman, Justice Elizabeth Ikpejime, said the petitioner failed to prove which provision of the Electoral Act the election contravened.

Omisore had dragged Aregbesola before the tribunal asking the panel to nullify the governor’s victory and declare him winner of the poll.

He had said that the election was vitiated by malpractices perpetrated by agents of the first respondent thus asking the tribunal to sack Aregbesola.

But the tribunal upheld Aregbesola’s victory and said the APC candidate scored 394,684 votes credited to him by the Independent National Electoral Commission, while Omisore polled 292,747 votes.

The petitioner challenged the election result in 939 polling units in 142 wards in 17 local government areas.

The disputed local government areas are Ayedaade, Atakumosa East, Boripe, Ede North, Ede South, Ejigbo, Ifelodun, Ilesa East and Ilesa West.

Others are Irepodun Local Government, Irewole, Iwo, Obokun, Olaoluwa, Olorunda, Oriade and Osogbo Local Government Area.

However, Justice Ikpejime held that the petitioner failed to prove the allegations contained in his petition.

The dismissal of the petition triggered jubilation as APC supporters took to the street to celebrate the victory.

But Omisore’s counsel, Mr. Nathaniel Oke, said though the judgement was binding on his client, there were some areas of disagreements.

He said that his client would appeal the judgement.

Meanwhile, Aregbesola dedicated the victory to the people of the state.

He said in a statement made available to our correspondent that the verdict was the demonstration of the wish of the people.

The governor said in a sane society, Omisore would not have approached the election tribunal because there was no redress to be sought.

“It is pertinent to state here that those who went to the tribunal knew that the petition lacked any substance whatsoever; it is a sheer waste of the time of the judiciary,” he said.

The Independent National Electoral Commission has listed Kano, Kaduna and Lagos as the states leading in the collection of Permanent Voter Cards.

The electoral body said it was committed to its earlier position that the Temporary Voter Cards would not be allowed for voting during the next general elections.

The INEC Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, in his submission to the Council of State meeting presided over by President Goodluck Jonathan on Thursday, said the commission would not reverse its decision to use PVCs for the elections in order to enhance the credibility of the polls.

A copy of the submission titled: “Preparations for the 2015 general elections: Progress report,” presented to the Council of State meeting by Jega stated that a total of 45,098,876 PVCs had been collected across the country as of Wednesday.

A document tagged “Attachment 2” attached to Jega’s presentation claimed that the figure represents 65.81 per cent of the 68,833,476 total number of registered voters nationwide.

The document indicated that 3,190,417 voters had collected their PVCs out of the 4,975,701 registered voters in Kano State representing 64.11 per cent of the registered voters.

In Kaduna State, 2,976,628 voters, representing 87.36 per cent, have collected their cards out of 3,407,222 registered voters.

In Lagos State, 2,267,039 voters, representing 38.39 per cent, have collected their PVCs out of 5,905,852 registered voters.

In Katsina State, 2,245,303 voters (79.40 per cent) have collected their cards out of 2,827,943 registered voters.

Bayelsa State has the least number of voters with PVCs. In that state, 386,125 voters (63.26 per cent) have collected their cards out of 610,373 registered voters.

In Abuja, 464,769 voters (52.73 per cent) have collected their cards out of 881,472 registered voters.

In Ekiti State, 496,536 voters (67.83 per cent) have collected their PVCs out of 732,021 registered voters.

Jega, however, said the commission would not conduct elections with TVCs because they (the TVCs) had no chips and could therefore not be authenticated by card readers.

He added that if TVCs were allowed, millions of people who were involved in multiple registration and whose names had been removed from voters register for the next elections would approach polling units on election days, whereas their names would not be in the register.

The INEC chairman said, “The nation has invested a lot in the Card Readers and Permanent Voters Cards technology and the commission believes that using them in the 2015 general elections would confer remarkable transparency and credibility to the electoral process.

“There have been demands that the commission should revert to the use of TVCs issued during the 2011 registration and the subsequent Continuous Voters Registration.

“The TVCs have no chips and therefore cannot be verified or authenticated by the card readers. Also, there are more than four million cases of multiple registration; people with TVCs, who have been removed from the certified register of voters for the 2015 elections.

“Once the use of TVCs is allowed, many of these people would inundate polling units on election day; their names will not be in the register, and they would start agitation that they have been ‘disenfranchised’ as was the case during the Anambra State governorship elections in November 2013.

“In any case, people who collected PVCs no longer have TVCs because they used them to exchange for PVCs.

“Additionally, a high percentage of voters had to use the attestation forms provided to collect their PVCs due to loss of TVCs on account of floods, insurgency, etc.”

Meanwhile, Jega regretted that due to funding constraints, the commission could not do enough hands-on training for its Presiding Officers and Assistant Presiding Officers on the technology of the PVCs and card readers.