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Followers of sports in Nigeria recall the 1996 Olympics in the United States with tremendous affection. It was our finest, an event during which we won two golds and an all-time total of six.
Here is how 1996 has been followed by mounting futility ever since: In 2000, President Olusegun Obasanjo, who had returned to power the previous year, ordered our Olympics-bound team to bring home five gold medals from the Sydney Games. Nonetheless, Nigerian authorities again descended into recriminations, pledging that the 2004 Centennial Games in Athens would be different, with our athletes prepared and trained.Side note: It is always funny to me when Nigerian governments try to define four years, whether in terms of their tenure in office, or of the distance between Olympics.
On then, to 2008: The prospects for Beijing were so grim that the Minister for Sports requested President Umaru Yar’Adua to consider withdrawing Team Nigeria from participation. Despite all of the talk since the Atlanta Games in 1996, 20 years earlier, we had found medals must be earned, not merely wished, at the Olympics. That year, Nigeria somehow returned with four medals, three of them bronze.
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