Jeremiah Okorodudu, please forgive Nigeria

Segun Odegbami

It is a sad day and a sadder period for sports in Nigeria.

A few days ago, Jeremiah Okorodudu, a famous Nigerian boxer, probably the most flamboyant and loquacious boxer in the country’s boxing history, died in a private hospital in the outskirts of Lagos, Nigeria.

He was only 64 years of age.

His death attracts special attention. It followed a mostly silent, two-year battle with poor health described by some media reports as the product of Stroke and Diabetes. In the past two weeks, the public was drawn to Jerry’s plight through social media. Pictures of him lying on a bed in a local hospital in Ikorodu, Lagos, with headlines screaming for help for the celebrated former athlete, were very pitiable, a sad commentary on the general life-after-sport of many national sports heroes.

There was also a video of Jeremiah gasping, struggling to speak through obvious pain, inaudible mumbling through laboured breath. He was shown crying and appealing to the government and to Nigerians not to let him die, like that.

All that he needed at the time were about the equivalent of $2000 to pay for an essential life-saving surgery – amputation of his foot. This meagre amount was ‘change-money,’ even for any one of those in the corridors of sports at different levels of government, particularly. Obviously, the era of sports administrators that spent their personal funds to support sports and athletes is a long way back in the dungeons of history.

These days, sport is a sector to be milked of any sweet harvests. That’s why there is a fight to the finish in the scramble for positions of leadership in sports by those with the least stakes in sport.

Jeremiah Okorodudu needed that paltry sum to save his life. His family could not raise it