By Chris Adetayo
Quite a few “Nigerians” represented other countries at the Paris Olympics. Germans, Italians, Brits, Irish, Canadians, Americans, Bahrainis, Greeks etc. One, Giannis Antetokoumpo (Adetokunbo), was the flagbearer of Greece during the opening ceremony.
This drew the ire of Nigerians - seeing our children perform brilliantly in the colours of other countries, while those who repped Nigeria came up woefully short.
But it will get “worse”. In this, I mean that the Nigerian names you will see on the global scene representing other countries will grow and grow in the next couple of Olympics.
By 2028 and 2032, the children of the Japa generation of the 2000s (those who took UK’s HSMP and similar emigration opportunities 2 decades ago) would have come of age. Who will they be representing?
By 2040, the wave of Japa we have witnessed in the last 5 years will manifest on our TV screens and in sports arenas around the world. Put your money on this.
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| All of Nigerian heritage |
It’s unfortunate. Our inability to provide the environment for our own to thrive. It is also a reality of the globalized world we live in, with positive and negative effects for all.
In the final analysis, what this exposes is that ours is still largely a country of “raw materials”. In sports, as in other areas, mining and refining still remains largely beyond us. A collective failure!
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