The Life Of An Olympian – Night of a hundred gods and goddesses

[FILE] Nigerian players celebrate with their gold medal after beating Argentina in the final at Atlanta ’96 Olympics

It happened on Thursday night at the Yar’Adua Conference Centre, Abuja. Some of the most outstanding athletes in Nigeria’s Olympic sports in the past six decades (therefore all Olympians), assembled for a special bi-annual re-union organised to remind their government and prick the conscience of Nigerians about the pledge embedded permanently in eternal words within their national anthem, words passionately sung by the athletes when going into ‘battle’ in their sports: “The Labour of our heroes past, shall never be in vain.”

It was a very emotional night for me because I was given the privileged role of delivering the dinner-talk. Unfortunately, that meant waiting till the tail end of the event, when all the awards would have been given, tributes paid ànd the lavish citation of awardees read and dinner served.

Emmanuel Babayaro, the Secretary- General of the Nigerian Olympians Association (NOA), called me after the event and lamented that it was a poor idea to have put my speech after dinner, because soon after, the big hall emptied of the invited guests.

My dinner-talk ended up as a sermon to the Olympians. It was meant to take the audience into the world of Olympic athletes, to be presented from my personal first-hand experience of the Olympics since 1968 to date. It was to serve also as a reminder of what it takes and what it means to be an Olympian.

Before going into how that turned out, permit me to tell you about the award and awardees.

The hall was packed with awardees and their ‘supporters.’ The most notable recipients included the Deputy-Governor of Edo State, the wife of the immediate past Governor of