Blessing Okagbare decries ‘Foreign Invasion’, says enough is enough!

In the past year, the trend of recruiting foreign athletes to represent Nigeria at international competitions has raised a lot of dust. The issue has been a subject of discourse amongst stakeholders of the sport, with the home-based athletes left wondering where they went wrong.

However, against the backdrop of Nigeria’s dismal performance at the recently concluded IAAF World Relays in the Bahamas where the country went with a depleted team that was hurriedly put together, the nation’s No.1 athlete, Blessing Okagbare can no longer hold back and has lent her voice to decry a situation where athletes with questionable heritage are being given an edge at the expense of full-blooded Nigerians who have been left in the lurch.

She took to Social Media platform, Facebook to air her views: “Those hoping for a change in Nigerian Track and Field, should not just wait but also pray. Honestly, I have been so calm about these people killing our grassroots section/home based athletes with their recruiting of athletes from other countries instead of building the great talents that we have. What a show of shame the administration has become.

“They sit down, criticize the athletes back home that they are not improving or doing enough to be at the top, yet they don’t do anything to support them, rate their recruits above the great talent that the country has, paying money and rent to athletes who have not even shown up at our Nigerian Trials just to look good. Enough is enough with the short cuts to success because, our nation and athletes are so better than this”, she vented.

The country had a below-par performance at the 2015 Penn Relays, which was meant to serve as a rehearsal for the World Relays a week later, and the situation was no different in the Bahamas, except for the surprise GOLD won by the 4x200m women’s team which comprised of Okagbare, Regina George, Dominique Duncan and Christy Udoh.

There have been insinuations that the team was put together by the athletes themselves, having decided to take matters into their own hands. The women’s 4x100m finished in 7th place but made the cut for qualification for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio. Nigeria did not start in the men’s 4x100m event due to the unavailability of athletes like Ogho-Oghene Egwero who couldn’t make it to Bahamas due to shoddy traveling arrangements.

The country placed 4th and 7th respectively in the women and men’s 4x400m races in the heats and did not even make the finals, which was a far cry from what was experienced last year as it will be recalled that the women’s team won Bronze behind the US and Jamaica, which incidentally, was the country’s only medal at the competition.

Despite the outcry that has trailed the recruitment of these foreign athletes, there is nothing to suggest that the trend will be coming to a halt anytime soon. Competing for Nigeria at the Penn Relays in the men’s 4x400m was another ‘new’ athlete, LeJerald Betters, who is still listed on the IAAF website as an American athlete.

It is commendable that Okagbare has decided to speak out at a time when the morale of the home-based athletes is at an all-time low, following the lack of support and motivation from the federation and country as a whole. The only source of meaningful competition for athletes on the domestic scene, the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) Golden League, which was initially slated to hold this weekend, has been postponed until further notice, making an already bad situation worse.

As Nigeria’s most outstanding athlete for some years now, Okagbare’s voice may be the much-needed impetus to put paid to the foreign invasion of our Track and Field!