Wrestling needs N200m a year to win major championships – Igali

Nigeria Wrestling Federation president, Daniel Igali, tells KAZEEM BUSARI what chances Nigeria has of winning medals at the 2016 Olympics

Why was Nigeria not at the World Wrestling Championship in Hungary last month?

Nigeria would have gone with three athletes to the championship but unfortunately we did not make it to the event. Iheanacho Ifeoma (67kg), Blessing Ogborodudu (63kg) and Adegoroye Odunayo (51kg) listed for the championship, but we were not given visas.

We applied for the visas over two weeks before the tournament but we were denied. I will love to find out the reasons Nigeria was denied because while I was in Budapest, I saw Congo, Guinea Bissau, Senegal, Cameroon and some other African teams. I don’t understand why Nigeria was denied the visas.

It bothers me more because when people ask me what my saddest moment was in sport, I tell them it was in 1992 when I was supposed to feature at an Olympic qualifier in Senegal. I had already made weight for the event, only to be excluded from the team at the airport because the wrestling federation had no money at the time. Now there’s money, but no visas so I understand how the athletes feel when they encounter disappointments in their career.

I would love to have the athletes compete at several championships before the 2016 Olympics so that we can have the opportunity to select the best team for the event. So missing out on the Budapest tournament is very troubling for me as the president of the Nigeria Wrestling Federation.

I’m sure it will not happen again because next time we’ll start the processes at least six weeks before tournaments.

Do you think the visa bottleneck was deliberate in order not to have Nigeria at the event?

We need to keep our house in order. In fairness to the president of the Nigeria Olympic Committee (Sani Ndanusa), he was very involved in the visa processes, trying to make things easier for us. It was the Slovakian Embassy that we were dealing with because we don’t have the Hungarian Embassy in Nigeria. He had also experienced a similar problem in the past where a Nigerian contingent was to feature in a championship and the team were not given visas. And in spite of  bringing the Minister of Foreign Affairs into the matter, the team were denied visas. He said the Ambassador explained that visas had earlier been issued to five athletes who claimed they were going for the same competition. This is why I need to know what may have caused our problem so that I check it before it repeats itself.

What activities are left this year to prepare the athletes?

We have the Mustapha International Championship in Egypt in October, we also have another in Rio de Janeiro in November and there are the Commonwealth Championships in Johannesburg, South Africa in December. We plan to send our full team to the event. We have the junior sports championships for under-17 athletes in November and also the Governor Seriake Dickson Wrestling Classics in November. These events can prepare the athletes for the next season in 2014.

How sure are you that we have the athletes that competed last year in their top form?

We have less than half of the athletes that competed last year in the current team. There’re a few younger ones, which means we need more time to groom them and develop them. But what we want is to have them all compete consistently at major events before the Commonwealth Games. Currently, we have two super powers in world wrestling – Canada and India. I think India are at the top right now. India did not just start preparation; they’ve been putting up wrestling programmes in the past 10 years, involving Russian coaches and budgeting over $1m each year for the sport.

We have our work cut out for us and I hope with the new policies of the National Sports Commission, we’ll get there in a few years.

If we get our acts right, we’ll win medals at the next Olympics. We’ve calculated that our athletes need at least 100 matches each to be ready for the Games; it means they should compete about eight times a year before 2016. We’re not looking at having a large team, we’re okay with three or four of our best fighters.

Any plan to hire foreign technical personnel? Or do we have coaches that can raise our game to compete with the best?

The issue of competences of technical staff has to do with exposure. If we expose them at competitions, they’ll become world class. But if we keep them back in Nigeria all the time, we’ll not likely get the best from them. Everyone in the technical department was a former champion who had competed at a high level. There’re, however, some more experienced technical people all around the world, so if we need to up our game we might need help from some of them. I believe in encouraging our coaches because no person from anywhere in the world would have as much passion for our course as the Nigerian coaches. If such opportunity comes to hire a foreigner, we’re looking at the US, Canada, Russia, Cuba and Bulgaria. We’re looking at having somebody who’ll be willing to fit into the Nigerian system. I don’t want anyone who comes here and leaves within a short time. We want someone who can take it as a project, not because he wants the money. The wrestling federation doesn’t have the money to hire a foreigner so we’re looking up to our sponsor, the NSC, on how we can fund it.

As a former wrestler, how would you rate Nigerian wrestlers?

Unlike Nigerian athletics which waited for 14 years before winning medals, we won a bronze medal at the world championship in 2009 and another one in 2010. In 2011, we reached the semi-finals of the world championships. If you must win at world championships, you must compete regularly. A few years ago, Mongolia were nowhere in wrestling but now, they are a force to reckon with in women’s wrestling. They were second at the world championship with four medals. I knew Mongolia was going to do well because in recent past they were always at every competition, getting experience and building their team. In international wrestling, if there’s a tie, the decision goes to the athlete who is more frequent at tournaments. Frequent attendance means more rating, and that’s what I want with Nigerian wrestling.

Why are the athletes leaving wrestling for other sports like weightlifting?

It is because of the rule that an athlete can’t feature in the National Sports Festival more than three times in a particular sport. An athlete that is ineligible for the festival will automatically be sacked by the state sports council. This is the reason some of them take to other sports when they become ineligible. Some of them were ineligible as early as 20 years of age, so what do we expect them to do. Some sports don’t even get any competition except at the festival so how do you rate the athletes. This is why I joined in the campaign to allow the festival open to all athletes. The festival is our Olympics so no one should be barred. I’m happy the sports minister made the decision to open the festival to amateurs and professionals.

What does Nigeria stand to gain now that the International Olympic Committee has readmitted wrestling?
It means we’re back as part of the Olympic movement, and that we’ll be funded by the Federal Government. Secondly, there’ll be athletes who’ll aim to be at the Olympics. The Olympic Games are wrestling’s highest point. Unlike in football where players would want to play professional football in Europe and win the Champions League or in basketball where the ultimate dream of a player is to play in the NBA or hockey where players only dream of NHL titles, wrestlers only want to go to the Olympics. And because Nigeria was frontal in the campaign to get wrestling back into the Olympics, we now have a better relationship with the world body, FILA. The governor of Bayelsa State, Seriake Dickson, played an important role in our quest as he constantly kept in touch with FILA. He also sponsored my trips to Argentina for the IOC meeting where we presented our case.

As a whole, the Olympic issue had helped in the reviewing of the rules in wrestling. It has made the sport more interesting to watch, and the NWF is already working to keep the coaches and athletes up to date with the new rules.

What is Dickson’s special interest in wrestling? And what are you doing to take wrestling beyond Bayelsa?
He was a wrestler, and his father was a former champion in Ijaw land. Wrestling is a traditional sport of the Niger Delta. Anyone who has grown up to become a man in the region would have wrestled at one point in his earlier years. The governor feels we need to revive our sports to engage the youths, and he understands what wrestling means to the Ijaw people.

As the president of Nigerian wrestling, I know the Niger Delta states are leading in the sport; Bayelsa, Delta and Ondo finished tops at the last National Sports Festival. But there was a time Bauchi was leading in the sport, when Kano, Lagos and Plateau were strong competitors. What I want to do is to decentralise the sport by making other states contenders. The problem is that many of the states don’t have the facilities like wrestling mats. So the challenge is to provide these facilities and see how corporate organisations can come on board to help develop the sport.

Wrestling needs about N200m a year for our programmes in order to compete and be able to guarantee medals at major events. With over a budget of $10m last year, the US did not win a medal at the world championship. That tells you the sport is capital intensive in terms of preparation and very competitive.
We’re also looking at how we can improve athletes’ welfare by insuring them, and also help them in recovering from injuries. But all these require funds which the wrestling federation cannot bear alone.