47 years after Nigeria-led Montreal Olympics boycott, Air Peace, NIIA reward athletes

Members of Nigeria’s Montreal 1976 Olympic Games team and 1980 African Cup of Nations’ squad in front of the NIIA Diplomacy Wall of Fame, which was unveiled…at the weekend.

They came from across the world to be part of an event, which some of them said should have happened 47 years ago.

With tears of joy, the members of the Nigerian contingent to the Montreal 1976 Olympic Games, which the country led an African boycott to protest New Zealand’s romance with the Apartheid regime in South Africa, heaved sighs of relief that at last, their sacrifices were not in vain.

Organised by the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) and sponsored by Air Peace, the event christened ‘Investiture of Air Peace Sports Diplomacy Ambassadors’ and ‘NIIA Sports Diplomacy Wall of Fame,’ drew members of the diplomatic corps, sports personalities and captains of industry to Eko Hall on Friday to celebrate the Nigerian contingent to the botched 1976 Games.

The occasion was also used to celebrate members of the 1980 Green Eagles, who won Nigeria’s first African Cup of Nations title at the final in Lagos.

The 45 athletes were already in Montreal for the 1976 Olympics when Nigeria and 26 other countries, the majority of them Africans, pulled out from the Games.

The countries withdrew due to an unresolved diplomatic row over New Zealand rugby team’s tour of the then Apartheid South Africa, where Black people were subjugated by the racist regime.

Nigeria, then under the leadership of General Olusegun Obasanjo, led the boycott because the International Olympic Committee refused to impose a ban on New Zealand, whose rugby team toured South Africa in defiance of the United Nations’ resolution of a total sporting embargo against the racist Apartheid