Prospecting for medals in the water

The good news is that an Open Water Swimming Championship named after President Muhammadu Buhari is now in place… less than six months after the 2016 Rio Olympic fiasco and four years after the nation’s most disastrous Mundial outing in its recent sporting history. I am referring to the London Olympics in 2012.
The Open Water Swimming Jamboree is expected to play out at the popular Jabi Lake water front located at the City Centre of the nation’s capital. For the maiden tournament, no fewer than 26 states have signified their intentions to send their contingents to swim in the lake.

According to the Chairman of the Organising Committee of the championship billed to hold later this month, Senator Kabiru Gaya, participants must not fall below the age of 17. The organisers of the championship have also got the nod of the technical team of the Nigeria Aquatics Federation to organise the event at the Jabi Lake. JOSDAN Global Peace Foundation has endorsed the tournament too.
The objective of the event is to raise a pool of responsive young Nigerian swimmers who will exploit water as a springboard to lead healthy, purposeful and patriotic lives into adulthood as well as discover hidden talents, breed future stars and professionals who will represent Nigeria in international swimming competitions.
In addition, Sen. Gaya noted that the event would help to engage youths productively, promote cohesion, national peace, unity and security and that all the rules regarding the qualification and participation in the event had been made available to various state sports councils.

Prospecting for medals in the river or lake is not new to Nigerian sports. The Benue Sports Council did that some years back in the absence of a swimming pool. Not wanting to be out-swum at the Oluyole ’79 National Sports Festival, the swimming association marched the state’s participants to the overflowing River Benue to groom them for the event, not minding the danger posed by dangerous creatures like crocodiles, hippos and even snakes! Reacting to the improvisation by the council, I did a piece entitled “Benue’s love for swimming” in my sports column in the Standard of Jos that ran for eight years.
Everyone knows that aqua events are replete with all kinds of medals – gold, silver and bronze. The littoral states like Rivers, Bendel (now broken down to Edo and Delta states) dominated the biennial National Sports Festival from the mid-70s until the jamboree went into a fit, occurring at random. In fact, the two states were known to engage in dogfights at the zenith of the medal table(s) during the festival.

The decision to organise the Buhari Open Water Swimming Championship is a welcome development. I have always said that Nigeria is blessed with aqua potential. Aside from being a littoral nation, we have rivers, dams, lakes and even ponds in the hinterlands where we can hammer out raw swimmers that can dig out gold, silver and bronze medals at international swimming championships. Serious sporting nations like the United States, Great Britain, China and even South Africa are known to do well at the Olympics via various aqua events.
When Nigeria performed abysmally at the London Olympics, I did a two-part post mortem on this platform, urging the appropriate authorities to go and talent-hunt in the littoral communities with an eye for the 2016 Rio Olympic Games four years away.

They did not listen to me. I specifically placed the Makoko folks in Lagos state under the searchlight. These folks have lived all their lives on water:  moving from neighbour to neighbour on water, socialising on water and hawking their wares on water. They also cover several kilometers fishing in their canoes on daily basis. Where else can Nigeria fish for medal-winning swimmers except at Makoko and such riverside communities in the hinterland?
Then there are the young folks in the Niger Delta creeks… the born swimmers whose submarine skills can make a mermaid turn green with envy. They should be sucked into the Jabi Lake initiative… away from blowing up pipelines which results in the hemorrhaging of our economy.
It is hoped that this initiative will be a forerunner to winning medals at the Japan Olympic Games in 2020. The organisers have an uphill task of keeping tabs on materials they fish out from the Jabi Lake so that they don’t swim into oblivion in the manner that our football authorities at the Glass House lose track of potential talents discovered at the age-grade tournaments.

However, I suggest that the age limit be lowered to, say, 15. Potential younger swimmers so fished out now and in the near future will be hovering around their late teens and adolescence and should be able to swim vigorously like the catfish by the next Olympics. Young fish are bendable and amenable; old ones are dry and breakable!
All told, the organisers should ensure that the Lake is cleared of any dangerous creatures. Driving over the Lake any time, I have the feeling that there could be owner-occupiers other than harmless fishes which may feel threatened by the presence of humans who have chosen their natural habitat over the swimming pools to actualise their dreams of digging gold, silver, bronze as well as monetary benefits at international meets like the Japan 2020.